Valparaiso, Indiana.
Typical home $359,786 (+2.5% in a year), asking rent $1,459 (+4.3%). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$994 (+111%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $8,923 +3%
- $350,863$359,786 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $66,279 +23%
- $293,507$359,786 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.
- Valparaiso$1,888
- Indiana$1,350
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Valparaiso, IN rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Valparaiso, IN rose 4.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Valparaiso runs $1,062/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,150 in Oct 2023.
That is $2,521 a month against $1,459 rent: a $1,888 mortgage payment, plus $248 property tax and $385 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Valparaiso
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$2,521
- Renting$1,459
- Mortgage only$1,888
Property tax · $248/mo 0.83% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Porter County, IN
Insurance & upkeep · $385/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 Valparaiso, Porter County, Indiana
Valparaiso is a city of 34,151 people in Porter County. Half its households earn more than $69,872 a year and half less, against $87,972 across Porter County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 58% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 42% are rented. Unemployment in Valparaiso was 3.8% in August 2026, and Porter County had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than 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. Valparaiso is a city in Porter County, Indiana, with a population that sits somewhere between a large town and a small city. Incomes here run below the county's as a whole, and more households rent than across much of the county. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are warm in July and rain and snowmelt come through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing and the restaurant, hotel and entertainment trades also employing a good share. Among the largest workplaces in Valparaiso are Valparaiso Community Schools, Valparaiso University and Walmart. Unemployment is close to where it stood a year earlier, and the typical commute is of moderate length.
Things to do. Within town, the Brauer Museum of Art and the Memorial Opera House, a theatre, offer indoor outings. A short drive away is Taltree Arboretum and Gardens, a botanical garden. For a longer day out, Indiana Dunes National Park is a longer drive away.
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- 14,611households
- 41%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 10%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Porter County had 63,898 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than 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 83° and lows near 63°. About 40 inches of snow and 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Valparaiso Wtr Wks weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Valparaiso
- Valparaiso Community SchoolsSchool district771FTE
- Valparaiso UniversityUniversity or college754
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters384
- Porter-Starke ServicesOutpatient mental health centers and clinics370
- Porter-starke ServicesPsychiatric hospital325FTE
- VAL - Aldi Indiana297
- UGNAutomobile trimmings, textile, manufacturing273
- MeijerRetail266
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 47 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,252 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windrelatively high in parts of ValparaisoRelatively 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 Valparaiso’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 Porter County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Valparaiso home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Valparaiso$359,786
- Indiana$257,165
- 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 Valparaiso listings, and the typical home goes pending in 27 days — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
- Valparaiso33.58%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Valparaiso27
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Valparaiso325
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Valparaiso104
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Valparaiso$356,657
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Valparaiso98.18%
Zip codes with a Valparaiso address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Valparaiso — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Valparaiso
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 46383 | Valparaiso | 42,183 | $1,370 | $346,675 |
| 46385 | Valparaiso | 40,856 | $1,636 | $373,509 |
| 46393 | Wheeler | 216 | — | $215,743 |