Lake Station, Indiana.
Typical home $159,844 (+1.5% in a year), asking rent $1,670 . Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$505 (+151%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,414 +2%
- $157,430$159,844 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $40,488 +34%
- $119,356$159,844 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.
- Lake Station$839
- Indiana$1,350
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Lake Station, IN rose 1.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lake Station, Lake County, Indiana
Lake Station is a city of 13,235 people in Lake County. Half its households earn more than $59,591 a year and half less, against $71,493 across Lake County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 72% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 28% are rented. Unemployment in Lake County was 4.8% in August 2026, and the county had about as many jobs in 2025 as 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Lake Station is a small city in Lake County, Indiana, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Residents are younger than in many American towns, and household incomes run below the county's. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days and moisture falls fairly evenly through the year as rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, in professional and business services, and in transport, warehouses and utilities. Across Lake County, some of the largest workplaces are United States Steel, Cleveland-Cliffs Steel and Community Hospital. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. Indiana Dunes National Park, a national park of shoreline and dunes, is a short drive away. Chicago is a longer drive, and it brings the Art Institute of Chicago, a museum, and Millennium Park, a garden in the city's centre. Together they give a quiet day outdoors and a city outing within reach of one another.
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- 4,694households
- 7%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lake County had 191,579 jobs in 2025, about as many as the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 18°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 64°. About 40 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Indiana Dunes Nl weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lake County
- United States SteelSteel mills3,817
- Cleveland-Cliffs SteelSteel mills3,547
- Lake County GovernmentCounty supervisors' and executives' offices2,619
- Community HospitalGeneral hospital2,502FTE
- Methodist HospitalsGeneral hospital1,845FTE
- School City of HammondSchool district1,718FTE
- bp Whiting RefineryPetroleum refineries1,558
- Crown Point Community School CorpSchool district1,215FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 396 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 61,059 people in all across the county; Lake Station has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lake Station’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 Lake County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Lake Station home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lake Station$159,844
- Indiana$257,165
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Lake Station listings — the market is heating up.
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.
- Lake Station24.07%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Lake Station27
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Lake Station11
Zip codes with a Lake Station address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lake Station — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.