Palmer, Iowa.
Typical home $129,546 (+0.4% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$260 (+62%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $571 +0%
- $128,975$129,546 since Sep 2025
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.
- Palmer$680
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Palmer, IA rose 0.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Palmer, Pocahontas County, Iowa
Palmer is a city of 138 people in Pocahontas County. Half its households earn more than $59,063 a year and half less, against $61,875 across Pocahontas County. Unemployment in Pocahontas County was 3.5% in August 2026, and the county had 4.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Pocahontas County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Palmer is a very small farming-country town in Pocahontas County, Iowa, with far fewer residents than most places people think of as a city. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and a typical home is valued at a modest sum by national standards. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and very few people work from home.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, farming and retail also employing many. Across Pocahontas County, the largest workplaces include Bobalee Hydraulics, the Pocahontas Area Community School District and Pocahontas Community Hospital. The county had fewer jobs last year than the year before, and unemployment there is low and close to where it stood a year earlier.
Things to do. Twin Lakes State Park West is the best known nearby place, a park a longer drive away. Woodman Hollow State Preserve is another park, also a longer drive away, and the Oleson Park Music Pavilion is a theatre at about the same distance. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers turn warm in July, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow across the year.
Report a mistake
- 8%of adults have a degree
- 3%work from home
What people in Pocahontas County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Pocahontas County had 2,525 jobs in 2025, 4.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 8°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 62°. About 39 inches of snow and 33 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Pocahontas weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Pocahontas County
- Bobalee HydraulicsCylinders, fluid power, manufacturing142
- Pocahontas Area Comm School DistrictSchool district109FTE
- Pocahontas Community HospitalCritical access hospital81FTE
- BrandFX, LLC - PocahontasTruck bodies assembling on purchased chassis79
- Care Initiatives60
- PositechCranes, overhead traveling, manufacturing49
- Laurens-Marathon Comm School DistrictSchool district38FTE
- Arlington Place of PocahontasAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities26
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 8 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 496 people in all across the county; Palmer has none of its own. 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
- DroughtVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Palmer’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 Pocahontas County.
Palmer home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Palmer$129,546
- 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 Palmer address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Palmer — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Palmer
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50541 | Gilmore City | 1,067 | — | $96,192 |
| 50571 | Palmer | 273 | — | $134,084 |