Saint Joseph, Missouri.
Typical home $180,960 (+3.8% in a year), asking rent $990 (+3.1%). St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$509 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,638 +4%
- $174,322$180,960 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $38,270 +27%
- $142,691$180,960 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.
- Saint Joseph$950
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Saint Joseph, MO rose 3.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Saint Joseph, MO rose 3.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Saint Joseph runs $269/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $281 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,260 a month against $990 rent: a $950 mortgage payment, plus $116 property tax and $194 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Saint Joseph
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,260
- Renting$990
- Mortgage only$950
Property tax · $116/mo 0.77% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Buchanan County, MO
Insurance & upkeep · $194/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Saint Joseph, Buchanan County, Missouri
Saint Joseph is a city of 72,473 people in Buchanan County. Half its households earn more than $57,956 a year and half less, against $62,158 across Buchanan County; 18% of its people live below the poverty line. 63% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 37% are rented. Unemployment in Saint Joseph was 4.1% in August 2026, and Buchanan County had 1.1% more 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. Saint Joseph is a city on the Missouri River, large enough to have its own hospitals, schools and downtown cultural venues, yet with a commute that stays short for most people. Incomes here run a little below the county's, and a good number of households live below the poverty line. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and fewer adults hold a four-year degree than you might find in larger metro areas.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail, and restaurants and hotels also employing a lot of people. Among the largest workplaces in Saint Joseph are Heartland Regional Medical Center, Altec Industries and Triumph Foods. Unemployment has eased a little compared with a year earlier, and the county has added a few jobs over the past year.
Things to do. The city has several museums close by, including the Pony Express Museum and the Albrecht-Kemper Museum, and the Missouri Theatre hosts performances downtown. For time outdoors, Lake Contrary is a short drive away, and Lewis and Clark State Park, a protected area, is a longer drive. Winters are cold and summers are hot, with a moderate amount of rain and snow across the year.
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- 28,756households
- 23%of adults have a degree
- 18%below the poverty line
- 17 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Buchanan County had 46,348 jobs in 2025, 1.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 17°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 67°. About 35 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the St. Joseph Rosecrans Airport weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Saint Joseph
- Heartland Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital3,892FTE
- Altec IndustriesManufacturing2,538
- Triumph FoodsPork carcasses, half carcasses, and primal and sub-primal cuts produced in slaughtering plants2,245
- Lehr Construction CompanyConstruction management, industrial building1,176
- St. Joseph SchoolsSchool district1,171FTE
- Boehringer Ingelheim Animal HealthVaccines manufacturing878
- THE Hillshire Brands CompanyMeat processed from carcasses829
- Missouri Western State UniversityUniversity or college489
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 99 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 21,022 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Hailrelatively high in parts of Saint JosephRelatively moderate
- Strong windrelatively high in parts of Saint JosephRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesrelatively high in parts of Saint JosephRelatively moderate
- Lightningrelatively high in parts of Saint JosephRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Saint Joseph’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 Buchanan County and the St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
Saint Joseph home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Saint Joseph$180,960
- Missouri$265,387
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Saint Joseph listings, and the typical home goes pending in 15 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.
- Saint Joseph30.99%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Saint Joseph15
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Saint Joseph321
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Saint Joseph110
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Saint Joseph$187,924
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Saint Joseph98.63%
Zip codes with a Saint Joseph address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Saint Joseph — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Saint Joseph
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 64506 | Saint Joseph | 21,461 | $1,007 | $278,634 |
| 64505 | Saint Joseph | 14,107 | — | $220,313 |
| 64507 | Saint Joseph | 13,991 | $1,178 | $167,508 |
| 64503 | Saint Joseph | 11,954 | $1,048 | $171,796 |
| 64501 | Saint Joseph | 10,689 | $892 | $125,539 |
| 64504 | Saint Joseph | 10,068 | $1,200 | $130,271 |