Steward, Illinois.
Typical home $284,348 (+10.0% in a year). Dixon, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$669 (+81%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $25,935 +10%
- $258,413$284,348 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.
- Steward$1,492
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Steward, IL rose 10.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Steward, Lee County, Illinois
Steward is a village of 229 people in Lee County. Unemployment in Lee County was 3.7% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Lee 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Steward is a very small village in Lee County, Illinois, where neighbors are likely to know one another by sight. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and highs staying below freezing, while July brings warm days. Rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the year, spread across the seasons. Very few households fall below the poverty line.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels also employing many. Across Lee County, some of the largest workplaces are Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital, Crest Foods Co and Raynor Garage Doors. The typical commute is a fairly long one, and almost nobody works from home. Unemployment across the county is lower than it was a year earlier, and the county has gained jobs.
Things to do. Rochelle Railroad Park is a park a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Shabbona Lake State Park, a protected area for walking and time by the water, and to the Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, a protected historic site. The Kishwaukee River, also a longer drive away, offers another stretch of waterside scenery.
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- 3%below the poverty line
- 30 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What people in Lee County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Lee County had 12,642 jobs in 2025, 2.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 28° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Rochelle weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Lee County
- Katherine Shaw Bethea HospitalGeneral hospital716FTE
- Crest Foods CoContract packaging713
- Department of CorrectionsCorrectional institutions563
- Raynor Garage DoorsGarage doors, metal, manufacturing536
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters334
- Help At HomeHomemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical314
- Dixon USD 170School district312FTE
- Sewer Equipment Co. of AmericaDraglines, crawler, manufacturing310
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 39 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,409 people in all across the county; Steward 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively 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 Steward’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 Lee County and the Dixon, IL metro.
Steward home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Steward$284,348
- Illinois$295,943
- 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 Steward address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Steward — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.