Island, Kentucky.
Typical home $142,883 (-2.6% in a year). Owensboro, KY metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$384 (+105%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $3,757 -3%
- $146,641$142,883 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $21,632 +18%
- $121,251$142,883 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.
- Island$750
- Kentucky$1,212
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 21 years.
Typical home values in Island, KY fell 2.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Island, McLean County, Kentucky
Island is a city of 429 people in McLean County. Unemployment in McLean County was 4.1% in August 2026, and the county had 1.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Island is a very small city in McLean County, Kentucky, where most people know one another by sight if not by name. Few adults here hold a four-year degree compared with the country as a whole, and the typical home is modest in price. Winters are cold but bring little snow, summers are warm, and rain falls steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, and shops also employing many. Across McLean County, the biggest employers include McLean County Schools, Signature Healthcare and Advanced Drainage Systems. Jobs in the county shrank a little last year, and the commute is on the long side, since most people drive some distance to reach work.
Things to do. No Creek is a river a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Lake Malone State Park, a protected area built around Lake Malone, and to the International Bluegrass Music Museum, which celebrates a music closely tied to this part of Kentucky. Indian Knoll, an archaeological site, is also a longer drive away.
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- 7%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 34 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McLean County had 1,716 jobs in 2025, 1.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 42° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 68°. About 4 inches of snow and 46 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Calhoun Lock weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in McLean County
- McLean County SchoolsSchool district241FTE
- Signature HealthcareSkilled nursing facilities93
- Advanced Drainage SystemsPlastic pipe manufacturing69
- Perdue FoodsOther animal food manufacturing39
- Tyson ChickenPoultry hatcheries23
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 224 people in all across the county; Island has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- Ice stormsVery high
- Strong windVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Island’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 McLean County and the Owensboro, KY metro.
Island home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Island$142,883
- Kentucky$230,909
- 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 Island address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Island — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.