Poneto, Indiana.
Typical home $240,624 (+7.5% in a year). Bluffton, IN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$759 (+151%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $16,763 +7%
- $223,861$240,624 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $71,702 +42%
- $168,922$240,624 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.
- Poneto$1,263
- Indiana$1,350
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Poneto, IN rose 7.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Poneto, Wells County, Indiana
Poneto is a town of 173 people in Wells County. Unemployment in Wells County was 2.7% in August 2026, and the county had 1.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Wells 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Poneto is a very small town in Wells County, Indiana, where people tend to know one another and daily life moves at a quiet pace. Homes here are valued well below what is typical for the country as a whole, and household incomes across Wells County sit a little above the middle of the pack. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and almost everyone travels to a job rather than working from home.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in manufacturing, in shops and in the building trades. Across Wells County, some of the largest workplaces are Hersheys Salty Snacks, WEG Electric and Norwell Community Schools. The typical commute is a moderate drive, and unemployment across the county is low and a little lower than a year earlier, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Ouabache State Park is a protected area a short drive away, a natural spot for walking and being outdoors. Farther afield, a longer drive reaches J. Edward Roush Lake, a reservoir, and the St. Joseph River. Winters are cold, with real snow, and summers are warm, with a fair amount of rain through the year.
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- 13%of adults have a degree
- 25 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What people in Wells County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Wells County had 11,160 jobs in 2025, 1.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 17°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 63°. About 23 inches of snow and 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Bluffton 6N weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Wells County
- Hersheys Salty SnacksPretzels manufacturing338
- WEG ElectricFractional horsepower electric motors manufacturing329
- Norwell Community SchoolsSchool district285FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters257
- American AxleAutomatic transmissions, automotive, truck, and bus, manufacturing249
- MSD Bluffton-HarrisonSchool district233FTE
- River Terrace Healthcare CenterHealthcare facility227
- Christian Care Retirement CommunitySkilled nursing facilities213
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 37 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 4,374 people in all across the county; Poneto 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 windRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Poneto’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Wells County and the Bluffton, IN metro.
Poneto home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Poneto$240,624
- Indiana$257,165
- 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 Poneto address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Poneto — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.