Olive Branch, Illinois.
Typical home $82,790 (+1.0% in a year). Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$9 (+2%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Up $801 +1%
- $81,989$82,790 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $29,763 -26%
- $112,553$82,790 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.
- Olive Branch$435
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Olive Branch, IL rose 1.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Olive Branch, Alexander County, Illinois
Olive Branch, in Alexander County, had 650 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Alexander County was 5.6% in August 2026, and the county had 3.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Alexander County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Olive Branch is a very small community in Alexander County, in the far southern tip of Illinois. Homes here cost far less than in most of the country, and across Alexander County household incomes sit below the state's typical level. Few adults in town hold a four-year degree, and the county's job market has been shrinking, with fewer jobs last year than the year before.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in shops, in transport, warehouses and utilities, and in manufacturing. Across Alexander County, the largest workplaces include Bunge North America, which processes soybeans and other oilseeds, and American Commercial Barge Line, a towing service on the inland waterways. Unemployment in the county is lower than a year ago, though still high.
Things to do. Horseshoe Lake lies in or beside town, and the Horseshoe Lake State Fish and Wildlife Area and Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge are each a short drive away, both protected areas for wildlife and time outdoors. For a longer drive, Wickliffe Mounds is an archaeological site worth the trip. Winters are cold, summers hot, and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Report a mistake
- 3%of adults have a degree
What people in Alexander County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Alexander County had 859 jobs in 2025, 3.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 69°. About 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Alexander County
- Bunge North AmericaSoybean and other oilseed processing99
- American Commercial Barge LineTowing service, inland waters80
- Egyptian CUSD 5School district64FTE
- Cairo USD 1School district46FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 179 people in all across the county; Olive Branch 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Olive Branch’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Alexander County and the Cape Girardeau, MO-IL metro.
Olive Branch home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Olive Branch$82,790
- Illinois$295,943
- 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 Olive Branch address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Olive Branch — 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.