Garrison, Iowa.
Typical home $282,114 (+13.7% in a year). Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$732 (+98%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $33,933 +14%
- $248,181$282,114 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $73,205 +35%
- $208,909$282,114 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.
- Garrison$1,481
- 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 Garrison, IA rose 13.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Garrison, Benton County, Iowa
Garrison is a city of 344 people in Benton County. Unemployment in Benton County was 3.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Benton 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Garrison is a very small Iowa city, the kind of place where residents are likely to know one another by name. Few adults here have a four-year degree, and the typical trip to work is a fairly long one, so most people travel out of town for their jobs. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also employing many. Across Benton County, some of the largest workplaces are Frontier Cooperative, which makes spices and spice mixes, the Vinton-Shellsburg Community School District and Virginia Gay Hospital. Jobs across the county have slipped slightly over the past year.
Things to do. Cedar Rock State Park, listed as a museum, is a longer drive away, as is the Cedar Valley Arboretum & Botanic Gardens, a botanical garden. For a day out with a different feel, the Museum of Art Cedar Rapids is also a longer drive from town.
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- 117households
- 8%of adults have a degree
- 30 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What people in Benton County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Benton County had 6,040 jobs in 2025, 0.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 8°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 60°. About 34 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Vinton weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Benton County
- Frontier CooperativeSpices and spice mix manufacturing441
- Vinton-Shellsburg Comm School DistrictSchool district271FTE
- Benton Comm School DistrictSchool district214FTE
- ClickstopCrating goods for shipping212
- Center Point-Urbana Comm School DistrictSchool district198FTE
- Virginia GAY HospitalCritical access hospital131FTE
- Fareway Stores, Inc. 462 VintonGrocery stores100
- Belle Plaine Comm School DistrictSchool district62FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 16 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,196 people in all across the county; Garrison has none 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Garrison’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Benton County and the Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
Garrison home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Garrison$282,114
- 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.
Zip codes with a Garrison address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Garrison — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.