Sheldahl, Iowa.
Typical home $225,368 (-2.0% in a year). Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$580 (+96%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $4,679 -2%
- $230,047$225,368 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $37,689 +20%
- $187,679$225,368 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.
- Sheldahl$1,183
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 19 years.
Typical home values in Sheldahl, IA fell 2.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Sheldahl, Polk County, Iowa
Sheldahl is a city of 297 people in Polk County. Half its households earn more than $80,938 a year and half less, against $83,576 across Polk County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 93% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 7% are rented. Unemployment in Polk County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Polk County work in schools and health care, then finance and property.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Sheldahl is a very small city, home to fewer people than most towns of its kind, and nearly every household owns the house it lives in. Incomes run a little below the county's, and few residents live below the poverty line. Winters are cold and snowy, with January highs near freezing and lows well below it, while July brings warm days and the year is fairly wet.
Work. Residents mostly work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by banks, insurance and property, shops, and professional and business services. The commute is a fairly long one, which fits a small town sitting beside a larger metro area. Across Polk County, some of the biggest workplaces are Mercy Medical Center-des Moines, Iowa Methodist Medical Center and Amazon.
Things to do. The High Trestle Trail, a protected area, runs in or beside town. A short drive away are Big Creek State Park and Big Creek Lake, a good pairing for a day of walking or time by the water. Saylorville Lake, a reservoir, is also a short drive away.
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- 31%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
What people in Polk County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Polk County had 314,942 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 13°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 66°. About 38 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Des Moines Wsfo-johnston weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Polk County
- Mercy Medical Center-des MoinesGeneral hospital4,548FTE
- Iowa Methodist Medical CenterGeneral hospital3,842FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage3,050
- Des Moines Independent Comm School DistrictSchool district2,945FTE
- TMC Transportation - CorporateTrucking, general freight, long-distance, truckload2,892
- The WaldingerAir system balancing and testing2,752
- BH ManagementManaging residential real estate2,382
- Electrical Power ProductsPower circuit breakers manufacturing2,025
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 683 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 96,287 people in all across the county; Sheldahl has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Droughtrelatively high in parts of SheldahlRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windrelatively high in parts of SheldahlRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Sheldahl’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 Polk County and the Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA metro.
Sheldahl home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Sheldahl$225,368
- 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 Sheldahl address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Sheldahl — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.