Salem, Iowa.
Typical home $224,067 (+12.9% in a year). Fort Madison-Keokuk, IA-IL-MO metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$546 (+87%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $25,584 +13%
- $198,482$224,067 since Sep 2025
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.
- Salem$1,176
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Salem, IA rose 12.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Salem, Henry County, Iowa
Salem is a city of 394 people in Henry County. Half its households earn more than $51,250 a year and half less, against $67,436 across Henry County; 18% of its people live below the poverty line. 83% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 17% are rented. Unemployment in Henry County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had about as many jobs in 2025 as the year before. The most people in Henry 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Salem is a small Iowa town, and most of the homes in it are lived in by their owners, a larger share than is typical for the country. Household incomes run below the county's, and more people here live below the poverty line than is usual, so the town is a modest one in means. Winters are cold, with a good deal of snow, and summers turn warm; rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades close behind. Across Henry County, some of the largest workplaces are Hearth n Home Technologies, which makes fireplace inserts, the Mount Pleasant Comm School District, and Continental, which makes plastics and rubber belts and hoses. Few people work from home, and the typical drive to work is a long one, longer than in many places.
Things to do. Big Cedar Creek is a river a short drive away, and the closest of the nearby places to be outdoors. A longer drive brings you to Shimek State Forest, a protected area of woodland, and to Geode State Park, another protected area. Nauvoo House, a museum, is also a longer drive away.
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- 150households
- 10%of adults have a degree
- 18%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What people in Henry County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Henry County had 8,140 jobs in 2025, about as many as the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 62°. About 25 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Mount Pleasant Ssw weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Henry County
- WalmartGeneral warehousing and storage598
- Hearth n Home TechnologiesFireplace inserts manufacturing292
- Mount Pleasant Comm School DistrictSchool district288FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters237
- ContinentalPlastics and rubber belts and hoses manufacturing220
- Cornerstone Building Brands - Metal SolutionsPanels, prefabricated metal building, manufacturing215
- Henry County Health CenterCritical access hospital187FTE
- Mt Pleasant PlantCooked meats made from purchased carcasses179
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 27 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,251 people in all across the county; Salem has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- LightningRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Salem’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Henry County and the Fort Madison-Keokuk, IA-IL-MO metro.
Salem home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Salem$224,067
- Iowa$236,623
- 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 Salem address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Salem — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.