Dune Acres, Indiana.
Typical home $932,731 (+11.2% in a year). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,867 (+141%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $93,688 +11%
- $839,043$932,731 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $258,108 +38%
- $674,623$932,731 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Dune Acres$4,896
- Indiana$1,350
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Dune Acres, IN rose 11.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Dune Acres, Porter County, Indiana
Dune Acres is a town of 234 people in Porter County. 96% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 4% are rented. Unemployment in Porter County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Porter County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Dune Acres is a very small lakeside town in Porter County, and nearly everyone who lives there owns their home. Residents are older than in most places, with a median age well above the national one, and a four-year degree is the norm among adults. Incomes in town run well above the county's, home values are high, and few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with January days that stay around freezing, while July brings warm days and a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and professional and business services also common. Across Porter County, some of the largest workplaces are Cleveland-Cliffs Burns Harbor, Porter Regional Hospital and Valparaiso Community Schools. The typical commute is a long one, and unemployment across the county has held about where it was a year ago, with the number of jobs growing only slightly.
Things to do. Much of what draws people outdoors lies in or beside town. Indiana Dunes National Park and Indiana Dunes State Park are the best known, and Cowles Bog, a protected area, and the Calumet Trail are close by as well. Anyone willing to drive farther can reach the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, a museum a longer drive away.
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- 79%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 33 mintypical commute
What people in Porter County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Porter County had 63,898 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 18°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 64°. About 40 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Indiana Dunes Nl weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Porter County
- Cleveland-Cliffs Burns HarborSteel manufacturing4,003
- Porter Regional HospitalGeneral hospital1,162FTE
- United States SteelSteel mills906
- Portage Township SchoolsSchool district856FTE
- Solid PlatformsScaffold erecting and dismantling811
- Valparaiso Community SchoolsSchool district771FTE
- Valparaiso UniversityUniversity or college754
- Duneland School CorporationSchool district638FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 155 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 23,440 people in all across the county; Dune Acres has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Dune Acres’ census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Porter County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Dune Acres home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Dune Acres$932,731
- Indiana$257,165
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Zip codes with a Dune Acres address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Dune Acres — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.