Hills, Iowa.
Typical home $241,610 (-6.1% in a year). Iowa City, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$546 (+76%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $15,722 -6%
- $257,331$241,610 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $28,016 +13%
- $213,594$241,610 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.
- Hills$1,268
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 28 years.
Typical home values in Hills, IA fell 6.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Hills, Johnson County, Iowa
Hills is a city of 863 people in Johnson County. Half its households earn more than $83,333 a year and half less, against $74,935 across Johnson County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Johnson County was 3.0% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Hills is a small Iowa city, one of the smaller places in Johnson County. Household incomes here run above the county's, and a smaller share of people live below the poverty line than you might expect from the county as a whole. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers turn properly warm by July, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, professional and business services, and other services also employing a good number. Across Johnson County, the largest workplaces include the University of Iowa, University of Iowa Health Care Medic and the Iowa City Comm School District. Commutes are fairly short, and some people work from home.
Things to do. A short drive away is Hickory Hill Park, a protected natural area, and Kinnick Stadium, the university's football stadium. The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art is also a short drive off. Closer to home, Dirty Face Creek and Crooked Creek run in or beside town, and for a longer outing the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is a longer drive away.
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- 438households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Johnson County had 85,623 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 29° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 62°. About 28 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Iowa City weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Johnson County
- University of IowaUniversity or college11,501
- University of Iowa Health Care MedicGeneral hospital10,020FTE
- Iowa City Comm School DistrictSchool district2,481FTE
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs1,669
- Heartland Express CorporateTrucking, general freight, long-distance, truckload1,331
- Integrated DNA TechnologiesAll other basic organic chemical manufacturing871
- City of Iowa CityGeneral services departments, government728
- Procter & Gamble Hair Care CompanyHair preparations manufacturing619
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 142 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 49,603 people in all across the county; Hills has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- TornadoesVery high
- Strong windVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Hills’ 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 Johnson County and the Iowa City, IA metro.
Hills home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Hills$241,610
- 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 Hills address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Hills — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.