Ola, Idaho.
Typical home $557,742 (+3.9% in a year). Boise City, ID metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,829 (+167%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $20,984 +4%
- $536,758$557,742 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $46,516 +9%
- $511,226$557,742 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.
- Ola$2,927
- Idaho$2,502
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 40 years.
Typical home values in Ola, ID rose 3.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ola, Gem County, Idaho
The Census does not count Ola on its own, so the figures here are Gem County's. Half the county's households earn more than $64,605 a year and half less; 12% of the county's people live below the poverty line. 76% of the county's homes are lived in by their owners and 24% are rented. Unemployment in Gem County was 3.2% in August 2026, and the county had 1.7% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Gem County work in schools and health care, then construction.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ola is a small town in Gem County, in the western part of Idaho. Winters are cold, with snow and frost, and summers are hot and dry. The town gets a fair amount of rain and melted snow across the year. Most homes across Gem County are lived in by their owners, and the town sits among neighbors who tend to know one another.
Work. Joblessness in Gem County is low and has fallen over the past year, and the county has added jobs since the year before. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in the building trades, in shops, or in manufacturing. A smaller share of adults hold a college degree than across the country, and most people commute by car, with relatively few working from home.
Things to do. The North Fork Payette River, one of the best known rivers nearby, is a longer drive away. Lake Cascade, a reservoir, and Lake Cascade State Park, a protected area, are also a longer drive away and offer room for water and open land.
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- 7,643households
- 44.2median age
- 21%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 30 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What people in Gem County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Gem County had 4,595 jobs in 2025, 1.7% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 38° and lows near 15°; warmest in July, with highs near 92° and lows near 51°. About 23 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Ola weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Gem County
- Emmett Independent DistrictSchool district275FTE
- AlbertsonsSupermarkets and other grocery stores134
- Walter Knox Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital119FTE
- River's EdgeSkilled nursing facilities86
- Woodgrain MillworksBeams, wood, made from logs or bolts78
- Gentry CivilExcavating, earthmoving, or land clearing contractors60
- Emmett of CascadiaHealthcare41
- Gold Star Foods - IdahoLivestock trucking, local39
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 459 people in all. School districts come 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
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Gem 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 Gem County and the Boise City, ID metro.
Ola home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ola$557,742
- Idaho$476,754
- 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 Ola address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ola — 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.