Minden, Iowa.
Typical home $291,078 (+5.3% in a year). Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$855 (+127%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $14,651 +5%
- $276,427$291,078 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $74,664 +35%
- $216,415$291,078 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.
- Minden$1,528
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Minden, IA rose 5.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Minden, Pottawattamie County, Iowa
Minden is a city of 600 people in Pottawattamie County. Half its households earn more than $109,167 a year and half less, against $73,602 across Pottawattamie County; 2% of its people live below the poverty line. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Pottawattamie County was 3.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.0% 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Minden is a very small city in Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and nearly everyone who lives there owns their home. Household incomes run well above the county's, and very few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a good deal of snow, while July brings real summer warmth and the year as a whole is fairly wet.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, the building trades, and transport, warehouses and utilities also employing many. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than hold other qualifications, and a small number work from home. Across Pottawattamie County, some of the largest workplaces are Tyson Fresh Meats, the Council Bluffs Comm School District and Iowa Western Community College.
Things to do. Omaha's attractions are a longer drive away, including the Joslyn Art Museum, a museum that suits a rainy or snowy day, and Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, one of the best known zoos in the region. For time outdoors, Prairie Rose State Park is a park a longer drive away. The USS Hazard, a museum, is another longer drive away.
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- 224households
- 29%of adults have a degree
- 2%below the poverty line
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Pottawattamie County had 41,804 jobs in 2025, 1.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 64°. About 28 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Oakland weather station, 14 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Pottawattamie County
- Tyson Fresh MeatsMeat processed from carcasses1,603
- Council Bluffs Comm School DistrictSchool district1,254FTE
- OSI OaklandMeats, cured or smoked, made from purchased carcasses959
- Iowa Western Community CollegeTwo-year college764
- Conagra BrandsFrozen specialty food manufacturing720
- Horseshoe Council Bluffs Captive630
- Jennie Edmundson MemorialGeneral hospital590FTE
- GXO Logistics WorldwideGeneral warehousing and storage420
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 107 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 15,246 people in all across the county; Minden has none of its own. 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
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively 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 Minden’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 Pottawattamie County and the Omaha-Council Bluffs, NE-IA metro.
Minden home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Minden$291,078
- 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 Minden address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Minden — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.