Panama, Iowa.
Typical home $258,963 (+10.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$643 (+90%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $25,071 +11%
- $233,892$258,963 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.
- Panama$1,359
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Panama, IA rose 10.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Panama, Shelby County, Iowa
Panama is a city of 235 people in Shelby County. Unemployment in Shelby County was 2.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Shelby 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Panama is a very small city in Shelby County, Iowa, the kind of place where neighbors tend to know one another. Homes here cost less than in much of the country, and fewer adults hold a four-year degree than is typical nationally. Winters are cold, with January highs a little below freezing and lows well down into the cold, and the town sees a fair amount of snow each year. Summers turn properly warm, with July the warmest month.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in farming, and in manufacturing, and very few work from home. Across Shelby County, some of the biggest employers are Monogram Prepared Meat, Myrtue Medical Center and the Harlan Community School District. Unemployment in the county is low and has held steady compared with a year earlier, and the county has added a few more jobs over the past year.
Things to do. The closest outings are all a longer drive away. Prairie Rose State Park is the best known, a good choice for a day by the water and the trees. The Museum of Danish America is a museum devoted to the story of Danish immigrants, and the Loess Hills are a stretch of park land with the distinctive hills this part of western Iowa is known for. The Boyer River is also within reach for anyone who likes to be near a stream.
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- 14%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 4%work from home
What people in Shelby County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Shelby County had 5,531 jobs in 2025, 1.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 64°. About 30 inches of snow and 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Harlan weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Shelby County
- Monogram Prepared MeatSausages and other prepared meats316
- Myrtue Medical CenterCritical access hospital215FTE
- Harlan Comm School DistrictSchool district188FTE
- Menards"general warehousing and storage"150
- Menards"wood window and door manufacturing"133
- Menards"general warehousing and storage"126
- Western Engineering CompanyAsphalt paving124
- Fareway Stores, Inc. 790 HarlanGrocery stores122
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 22 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,777 people in all across the county; Panama has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- TornadoesVery high
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- Cold wavesVery high
- DroughtRelatively 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 Panama’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 Shelby County.
Panama home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Panama$258,963
- 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 Panama address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Panama — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.