Plainfield, Iowa.
Typical home $226,258 (+2.3% in a year). Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$616 (+108%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $5,086 +2%
- $221,172$226,258 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $52,330 +30%
- $173,928$226,258 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.
- Plainfield$1,188
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Plainfield, IA rose 2.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Plainfield, Bremer County, Iowa
Plainfield is a city of 393 people in Bremer County. 87% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 13% are rented. Unemployment in Bremer County was 3.1% in August 2026, and the county had 1.7% fewer 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Plainfield is a very small Iowa city in Bremer County, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Homes here are priced well below what the county's household incomes might suggest, and few adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold and the summers warm, with rain and melted snow spread through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and banks, insurance and property also common. Across Bremer County, the largest workplaces include Wartburg College, Waverly Health Center and the Waverly-Shell Rock Comm School District. Unemployment is low and has barely moved over the past year, though the county has fewer jobs than it did a year earlier. Most people have a moderate drive to work, and only a small share work from home.
Things to do. The Little Cedar River is a short drive away, and Walston-Hoover Stadium is a short drive away too. For a longer outing, Hartman Reserve Nature Center is a protected area a longer drive away, and the Shell Rock River is also a longer drive from town.
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- 15%of adults have a degree
- 22 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Bremer County had 9,525 jobs in 2025, 1.7% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 25° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 62°. About 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Tripoli weather station, 14 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Bremer County
- Wartburg CollegeUniversity or college457
- Waverly Health CenterCritical access hospital356FTE
- Waverly-Shell Rock Comm School DistrictSchool district351FTE
- Schumacher Elevator CompanyElevator installation290
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters273
- Bartels Lutheran Retirement CommunityLong term care244
- FolienceAmbulances assembling on purchased chassis205
- United Equipment AccessoriesRelays, electrical and electronic, manufacturing171
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 21 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,411 people in all across the county; Plainfield has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Plainfield’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Bremer County and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA metro.
Plainfield home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Plainfield$226,258
- 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 Plainfield address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Plainfield — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.