Star, Idaho.
Typical home $582,851 (-0.2% in a year), asking rent $2,452 (+6.6%). Boise City, ID metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,668 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $948 -0%
- $583,800$582,851 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $25,150 -4%
- $608,001$582,851 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.
- Star$3,059
- Idaho$2,502
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Star, ID fell 0.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Star, ID rose 6.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Star runs $1,483/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,816 in Oct 2023.
That is $3,935 a month against $2,452 rent: a $3,059 mortgage payment, plus $252 property tax and $624 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Star
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$3,935
- Renting$2,452
- Mortgage only$3,059
Property tax · $252/mo 0.52% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Ada County, ID
Insurance & upkeep · $624/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 Star, Ada County, Idaho
Star is a city of 11,117 people in Ada County. Half its households earn more than $97,936 a year and half less, against $91,502 across Ada County; 6% of its people live below the poverty line. 81% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 19% are rented. Unemployment in Ada County was 3.3% in August 2026, and the county had 2.5% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then construction.
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. Star is a small city in Ada County, and most homes here are lived in by their owners. Incomes run a little above the county's, and fewer people live below the poverty line than you might expect for the area. Winters are cold, with some snow, and summers get hot, while the year as a whole is fairly dry.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, the building trades, restaurants and hotels, and professional and business services. Greyloch, a cabinet manufacturer, and Brightview, a landscaping company, are among the largest workplaces in Star. Commutes are fairly long, and a good number of people work from home.
Things to do. A short drive away, Eagle Island State Park is a protected area for time outdoors, and Warhawk Air Museum is a museum worth an afternoon. Arboretum Park, a botanical garden, is also a short drive away. For a ski area, Bogus Basin is a longer drive.
Report a mistake
- 5,251households
- 35%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
- 21%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Ada County had 295,234 jobs in 2025, 2.5% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 40° and lows near 23°; warmest in July, with highs near 93° and lows near 57°. About 10 inches of snow and 11 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Nampa Sugar Factory weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Ada County
- St. Lukes Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital6,955FTE
- Micron TechnologySemiconductor memory chips manufacturing5,046
- Boise State UniversityUniversity or college3,647
- Joint School District No. 2School district3,562FTE
- St. Alphonsus Regional MED CenterGeneral hospital3,272FTE
- Boise Independent DistrictSchool district2,657FTE
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs1,873
- St. Lukes Meridian Medical CenterGeneral medical and surgical hospitals1,256
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 472 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 74,189 people in all across the county; Star has two of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Wildfirerelatively high in parts of StarRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Star’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 Ada County and the Boise City, ID metro.
Star home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Star$582,851
- Idaho$476,754
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Star listings, and the typical home goes pending in 22 days — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
- Star37.30%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Star22
- United States24
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Star111
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Star35
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Star$588,339
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Star99.48%
Zip codes with a Star address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Star — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.