Decatur, Iowa.
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to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$642 (+107%) since Jan 2020.
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.
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Living in Decatur, Decatur County, Iowa
Decatur is a city in Decatur County. 99% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 1% are rented. Unemployment in Decatur County was 3.0% in August 2026, and the county had 1.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Decatur County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Decatur is a city in Decatur County, Iowa, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest. Rain and melted snow arrive through the whole year, so the seasons tend to be wet as well as cold or warm.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, or in manufacturing. Shops, restaurants, hotels and entertainment also provide a good deal of work. Unemployment is lower than it was a year earlier, and the county has more jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Nine Eagles State Park, a protected area, is the best known of the places near Decatur and lies a longer drive away. The Weldon River and the Grand River, both rivers, are also a longer drive away and offer a different kind of outing.
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- 10%of adults have a degree
- 38 mintypical commute
What people in Decatur County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Decatur County had 2,312 jobs in 2025, 1.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 33° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 66°. About 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lamoni Municipal Airport weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Decatur County
- Graceland University-LamoniUniversity or college302
- Central Decatur Comm School DistrictSchool district113FTE
- Decatur County HospitalCritical access hospital96FTE
- Lamoni Comm School DistrictSchool district56FTE
- Care Initiatives53
- National Management Resources Graceland UniversityJanitorial services28
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores25
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores24
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 5 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 269 people in all across the county; Decatur has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- DroughtRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Decatur County, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Decatur County.
Decatur home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Decatur address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Decatur — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.