Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
Typical home $175,548 (+9.9% in a year). Poplar Bluff, MO metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$496 (+117%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $15,856 +10%
- $159,692$175,548 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $44,051 +33%
- $131,497$175,548 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.
- Poplar Bluff$921
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Poplar Bluff, MO rose 9.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Poplar Bluff, Butler County, Missouri
Poplar Bluff is a city of 16,225 people in Butler County. Half its households earn more than $41,941 a year and half less, against $49,089 across Butler County; 21% of its people live below the poverty line. 53% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 47% are rented. Unemployment in Butler County was 5.3% in August 2026, and the county had 1.0% 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Poplar Bluff is a city in Butler County, Missouri, with a population on the younger side of what you find in many small towns. Incomes run below the county's, and more households live below the poverty line than most would expect, while slightly more homes are lived in by their owners than rented. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and the typical trip to work is short. Winters are cold, with only a little snow, summers are hot, and the year brings plenty of rain.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and restaurants and hotels also employing many. Among the largest workplaces in town are Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center, the Veterans Health Administration and Poplar Bluff R-I Schools. Across Butler County there are slightly fewer jobs than a year earlier, and unemployment has eased a little over the past year.
Things to do. Hydro Adventures, an amusement park, sits in or beside town. A short drive away, creeks such as Buck Creek and Agee Creek offer quiet water to visit. A longer drive brings you to Lake Wappapello, a reservoir, and Lake Wappapello State Park beside it.
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- 6,504households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 21%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Butler County had 17,959 jobs in 2025, 1.0% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 44° and lows near 26°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 71°. About 5 inches of snow and 52 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Poplar Bluff weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Poplar Bluff
- Poplar Bluff Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital836FTE
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs759
- Poplar Bluff R-I SchoolsSchool district627FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters426
- Three Rivers CollegeTwo-year college265
- WalmartSupermarkets and other grocery stores144
- Robertson ContractorsResurfacing, highway, road, street, bridge or airport runway137
- Menards"home centers"123
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 20 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,709 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Poplar Bluff’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 Butler County and the Poplar Bluff, MO metro.
Poplar Bluff home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Poplar Bluff$175,548
- Missouri$265,387
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Poplar Bluff listings, and the typical home goes pending in 29 days — the market is cooling.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Poplar Bluff23.90%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Poplar Bluff29
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Poplar Bluff197
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Poplar Bluff54
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Poplar Bluff$170,004
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Poplar Bluff96.46%
Zip codes with a Poplar Bluff address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Poplar Bluff — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.