Taos, Missouri.
Typical home $286,507 (+7.2% in a year). Jefferson City, MO metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$878 (+140%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $19,166 +7%
- $267,342$286,507 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $84,812 +42%
- $201,695$286,507 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.
- Taos$1,504
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Taos, MO rose 7.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Taos, Cole County, Missouri
Taos is a city of 1,150 people in Cole County. Half its households earn more than $98,854 a year and half less, against $74,876 across Cole County; 2% of its people live below the poverty line. 88% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 12% are rented. Unemployment in Cole County was 3.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then government.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Taos is a small city where nearly everyone owns the home they live in, and incomes run well above the county's, with very few households living in poverty. A good share of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are hot, with July the warmest, and rain and melted snow fall steadily across the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by government, other services and shops. Across Cole County, large employers include Jefferson City Schools, SSM Health-St. Marys-Jefferson City and Hitachi Energy USA in Jefferson City. Jobs across the county grew only slightly last year, and unemployment there is a little lower than it was a year earlier. The typical commute is a moderate one, and a small number of people work from home.
Things to do. For a look at Missouri's past, the Missouri State Museum and Jefferson Landing State Historic Site are both a short drive away. Clark's Hill/Norton State Historic Site, another protected area, is also a short drive away. The Moreau River is close by as well, and the Osage River is a longer drive for those who want to spend a day on the water.
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- 455households
- 31%of adults have a degree
- 2%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cole County had 54,542 jobs in 2025, 0.4% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 41° and lows near 22°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 68°. About 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Jefferson City Mem Airport weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cole County
- Jefferson City SchoolsSchool district1,491FTE
- Hitachi Energy USA, inc. Jefferson CityDistribution transformers, electric, manufacturing1,256
- ScholasticGeneral warehousing and storage906
- Unilever680
- Capital Holding GroupConstruction management, highway, road, street and bridge678
- SSM Health-st. Marys-jefferson CityGeneral hospital649FTE
- Capital Region Medical CenterGeneral hospital611FTE
- Jefferson City Medical GroupPhysicians' offices590
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 75 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,395 people in all across the county; Taos 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
- Heat wavesVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Taos’ census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Cole County and the Jefferson City, MO metro.
Taos home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Taos$286,507
- Missouri$265,387
- 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 Taos address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Taos — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.