Johnston, Iowa.
Typical home $400,194 (+0.8% in a year), asking rent $1,356 (+0.6%). Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,021 (+95%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $3,255 +1%
- $396,939$400,194 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $62,592 +19%
- $337,602$400,194 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.
- Johnston$2,101
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 20 years.
Typical home values in Johnston, IA rose 0.8% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Johnston, IA rose 0.6% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Johnston runs $1,732/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $3,088 a month against $1,356 rent: a $2,101 mortgage payment, plus $559 property tax and $428 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Johnston
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$3,088
- Renting$1,356
- Mortgage only$2,101
Property tax · $559/mo 1.68% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Polk County, IA
Insurance & upkeep · $428/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Johnston, Polk County, Iowa
Johnston is a city of 24,064 people in Polk County. Half its households earn more than $106,551 a year and half less, against $83,576 across Polk County; 10% of its people live below the poverty line. 71% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 29% are rented. Unemployment in Johnston was 3.4% in August 2026, and Polk County had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then finance and property.
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. Johnston is a city in Polk County, in the Des Moines area, with a younger population than many places where homeowners are looking to settle. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run well above the county's. Adults here are far more likely than most to hold a four-year degree, and the typical home costs more than in much of the county.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in banks, insurance and property, and in manufacturing and professional services. Among the largest workplaces in town are the Johnston Comm School District, ChildServe and the Corteva Johnston Campus. Commutes are fairly short, and a good number of people work from home.
Things to do. Saylorville Lake is in or beside town, a reservoir for time on the water and along the shore. A short drive away, the Iowa State Capitol and the Des Moines Art Center are both museums, and the Des Moines Botanical Center is a botanical garden. Winters are cold and snowy, summers are warm, and rain and melted snow are fairly steady through the year.
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- 9,259households
- 58%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 20 mintypical commute
- 14%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Polk County had 314,942 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 13°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 66°. About 38 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Des Moines Wsfo-johnston weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Johnston
- Johnston Comm School DistrictSchool district950FTE
- Corteva Johnston Campus - JH60 FranklinCultivation services488
- Corteva Johnston Campus - JH42 DarwinAgriculture research and development laboratories or services435
- Corteva Johnston Campus - JH62 CrickCultivation services425
- ChildServe - Habilitation CenterConvalescent homes or convalescent hospitals318
- Corteva Johnston Campus - JH33 ReidFarm supplies merchant wholesalers224
- Corteva Johnston Campus - JH36 ShullFarm supplies merchant wholesalers220
- CHI Living CommunitiesSkilled nursing facilities180
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 40 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,909 people in all. 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively 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 Johnston’s 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 Polk County and the Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA metro.
Johnston home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Johnston$400,194
- Iowa$236,623
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Johnston listings, and the typical home goes pending in 27 days — the market is cooling.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Johnston32.82%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Johnston27
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Johnston131
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Johnston35
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Johnston$372,354
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Johnston97.95%
Zip codes with a Johnston address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Johnston — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.