Keystone, Iowa.
Typical home $315,118 (+13.2% in a year). Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$976 (+144%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $36,645 +13%
- $278,473$315,118 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $98,303 +45%
- $216,816$315,118 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.
- Keystone$1,654
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 9 years.
Typical home values in Keystone, IA rose 13.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Keystone, Benton County, Iowa
Keystone is a city of 599 people in Benton County. 78% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 22% are rented. 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 residents work in schools and health care, then transport and warehouses.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Keystone is a very small Iowa city where most homes are lived in by their owners, and more so than is typical across the country. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and a fair amount of snow falls each year. Summers are warm, and the year brings a good amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by transport, warehouses and utilities, manufacturing, and the building trades. Across Benton County, some of the largest workplaces are Frontier Cooperative, which makes spices and spice mixes, the Vinton-Shellsburg Comm School District, and Virginia GAY Hospital. Relatively few residents work from home, and incomes in the county run on the higher side.
Things to do. For time outdoors, Honey Creek is a river and Pilot Grove State Preserve is a protected area, both a longer drive away. Indoors, the Museum of Art Cedar Rapids and the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library are museums, also a longer drive away.
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- 270households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 11%below the poverty line
- 8%work from home
What residents 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 28° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 28 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Belle Plaine weather station, 9 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; Keystone 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 windRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Keystone’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 Benton County and the Cedar Rapids, IA metro.
Keystone home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Keystone$315,118
- 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 Keystone address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Keystone — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.