Ponca, Nebraska.
Typical home $233,293 (+9.7% in a year). Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$698 (+133%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Up $20,603 +10%
- $212,691$233,293 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $61,753 +36%
- $171,540$233,293 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.
- Ponca$1,224
- Nebraska$1,461
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Ponca, NE rose 9.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ponca, Dixon County, Nebraska
Ponca is a city of 907 people in Dixon County. 75% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 25% are rented. Unemployment in Dixon County was 2.4% in August 2026, and the county had 9.0% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then other services.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ponca is a small city, the kind of place where neighbors tend to know one another. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and fewer people live below the poverty line than you might expect. Winters are cold, with the coldest weather in January, and summers turn warm by July; moisture comes as a mix of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in building trades, manufacturing and a range of other services. Across Dixon County, large workplaces include Michael Foods, an egg processing plant, and the Ponca Public Schools. Unemployment in the county is low and little changed from a year earlier, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Ponca State Park is in or beside town, a protected area with room to get outdoors. Adams Homestead and Nature Preserve is another protected area, only a short drive away. For a change of pace, the National Music Museum is a longer drive off.
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- 335households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 6%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Dixon County had 1,692 jobs in 2025, 9.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 63°. About 28 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Vermillion Southeast weather station, 17 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Dixon County
- Michael FoodsEggs, processed, manufacturing500
- Michael FoodsEggs, processed, manufacturing240
- SBI General & MechanicalMechanical contractors118
- Wakefield Public SchoolsSchool district91FTE
- Ponca Public SchoolsSchool district81FTE
- Emerson-hubbard Public SchoolsSchool district52FTE
- Allen Consolidated SchoolsSchool district40FTE
- CHSFarm supplies merchant wholesalers20
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 878 people in all across the county; Ponca has one 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
- HailVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ponca’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 Dixon County and the Sioux City, IA-NE-SD metro.
Ponca home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ponca$233,293
- Nebraska$278,299
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Ponca address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ponca — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.