Rantoul, Kansas.
Typical home $348,521 (+8.5% in a year). Ottawa, KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,147 (+168%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $27,377 +9%
- $321,144$348,521 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $99,405 +40%
- $249,116$348,521 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.
- Rantoul$1,829
- Kansas$1,291
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Rantoul, KS rose 8.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Rantoul, Franklin County, Kansas
Rantoul is a city of 165 people in Franklin County. Unemployment in Franklin County was 4.2% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Franklin 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Rantoul is a very small Kansas city, one of the smaller places in Franklin County, and daily life here is quiet and low-key. Homes are valued above what is typical for the county's smaller towns, and fewer residents than in many places have a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and some snow each year, while summers turn hot by July, and rain and melted snow fall at a moderate, fairly ordinary rate through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with many others in shops, in transport, warehouses and utilities, and in manufacturing. Across Franklin County, some of the largest workplaces are Walmart, American Eagle Outfitters Retail Distribution West and Ottawa Schools. Unemployment in the county is a little higher than a year ago, and the number of jobs there slipped slightly over the past year. Commutes are long compared with much of the country, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. The closest named spot is AdventHealth Field, a stadium a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Clinton Lake, a reservoir, and to the Spencer Museum of Art, a museum. The Wakarusa River, also a longer drive away, offers some quiet time by the water.
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- 11%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 35 mintypical commute
- 2%work from home
What people in Franklin County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Franklin County had 10,062 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 40° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 68°. About 8 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Osawatomie weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Franklin County
- WalmartGeneral warehousing and storage833
- American Eagle Outfitters Retail Distribution WestGeneral warehousing and storage546
- WalmartGeneral freight trucking, long-distance, truckload404
- Ottawa SchoolsSchool district356FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters323
- Ottawa University-OttawaUniversity or college244
- Kalmar SolutionsIndustrial trucks and tractors manufacturing237
- Adventhealth OttawaGeneral hospital221FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 24 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,600 people in all across the county; Rantoul has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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 windVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- LightningVery high
- Ice stormsVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- HailVery high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Rantoul’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 Franklin County and the Ottawa, KS metro.
Rantoul home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Rantoul$348,521
- Kansas$246,055
- 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 Rantoul address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Rantoul — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.