Ellsworth, Iowa.
Typical home $219,789 (+7.4% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$650 (+129%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $15,188 +7%
- $204,602$219,789 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $57,054 +35%
- $162,736$219,789 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.
- Ellsworth$1,154
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Ellsworth, IA rose 7.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ellsworth, Hamilton County, Iowa
Ellsworth is a city of 508 people in Hamilton County. Half its households earn more than $77,500 a year and half less, against $72,432 across Hamilton County; 3% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Hamilton County was 2.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Hamilton County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 24 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ellsworth is a very small Iowa city, with a population well under what most towns of its kind hold. Household incomes run higher than across Hamilton County, and few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days and the year as a whole is moderately wet.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail and the building trades close behind. Across Hamilton County, some of the largest workplaces are Van Diest Supply Company, the Webster City school district and Van Diest Medical Center. Commutes are of middling length, and few people work from home.
Things to do. Anderson Goose Lake lies in or beside town, and Little Wall Lake is a short drive away. Also a short drive off is the Herschel-Spillman Two-Row Portable Menagerie Carousel, a tourist attraction, and the Grand Auditorium and Hotel Block, a theatre. A longer drive takes you to Dolliver Memorial State Park.
Report a mistake
- 194households
- 21%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Hamilton County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Hamilton County had 5,703 jobs in 2025, 1.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 61°. About 33 inches of snow and 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Webster City weather station, 16 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Hamilton County
- Van Diest Supply CompanyPesticide and other agricultural chemical manufacturing557
- Webster City Comm School DistrictSchool district277FTE
- Van Diest Medical CenterCritical access hospital200FTE
- City of Webster CityAdministrative office118
- VantecSeptic tanks, plastics or fiberglass, manufacturing113
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores104
- South Hamilton Comm School DistrictSchool district100FTE
- Hanor Company of WisconsinAgriculture95
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 18 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,624 people in all across the county; Ellsworth has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ellsworth’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Hamilton County.
Ellsworth home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ellsworth$219,789
- Iowa$236,623
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Ellsworth6
Zip codes with a Ellsworth address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ellsworth — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.