Letts, Iowa.
Typical home $128,709 (-5.4% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$326 (+93%) since Feb 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $7,288 -5%
- $135,997$128,709 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $18,488 +17%
- $110,221$128,709 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.
- Letts$676
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 22 years.
Typical home values in Letts, IA fell 5.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Letts, Louisa County, Iowa
Letts is a city of 363 people in Louisa County. Half its households earn more than $76,538 a year and half less, against $77,354 across Louisa County; 3% of its people live below the poverty line. 87% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 13% are rented. Unemployment in Louisa County was 3.5% in August 2026, and the county had 5.0% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Louisa County work in manufacturing, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Letts is a very small Iowa city, and most homes are lived in by their owners. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and few residents live below the poverty line. Typical home values are modest. Winters are cold, with January highs near freezing and lows well below it, and snow falls through the season. Summers turn warm in July, and rain and melted snow arrive steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in the building trades. Across Louisa County, Tyson Fresh Meats and the Louisa-Muscatine Community School District are among the largest workplaces. Jobs across the county fell over the past year, and unemployment is lower than it was a year earlier. A typical commute is a drive of a fairly ordinary length for a rural area.
Things to do. A short drive away, the Cedar River and Goose Creek offer water and open country close to town. Farther afield, Wildcat Den State Park is a protected area, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum is a longer drive away. Kinnick Stadium, a stadium for college football, is also a longer drive.
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- 11%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
What people in Louisa County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Louisa County had 3,697 jobs in 2025, 5.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 11°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 31 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Columbus Junction weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Louisa County
- Tyson Fresh MeatsAnimal slaughtering1,305
- Louisa-Muscatine Comm School DistrictSchool district136FTE
- Columbus Comm School DistrictSchool district104FTE
- MidAmerican Energy CompanyElectric power generation, fossil fuel98
- Wapello Comm School DistrictSchool district96FTE
- Fortrex - 0057 Tyson Foods Inc. - Columbus JunctionJanitorial services87
- Care Initiatives72
- Colonial ManorNursing homes62
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,693 people in all across the county; Letts 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
- Strong windVery high
- HailRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Letts’ 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 Louisa County.
Letts home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Letts$128,709
- 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 Letts address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Letts — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.