Towanda, Illinois.
Typical home $265,949 (+0.2% in a year). Bloomington, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$718 (+106%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $558 +0%
- $265,391$265,949 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $63,898 +32%
- $202,051$265,949 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.
- Towanda$1,396
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Towanda, IL rose 0.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Towanda, McLean County, Illinois
Towanda is a village of 431 people in McLean County. 89% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 11% are rented. Unemployment in McLean County was 3.4% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% fewer 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Towanda is a small village where nearly all the homes are lived in by their owners, a far higher share of owner-occupiers than is usual. Home values here run above what many older homeowners might expect for a village this size, and fewer residents hold a four-year degree than in many larger places. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a fair amount of snow, while July brings warm days, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, the building trades, shops, and transport, warehouses and utilities. Across McLean County, some of the largest workplaces are Illinois State University, McLean County USD 5 and Rivian Motorway in Normal. Unemployment in the county is lower than it was a year earlier, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before, and a share of residents work from home.
Things to do. A short drive away, Miller Park Zoo makes an easy outing, and Lake Bloomington is a reservoir for time on the water. Also a short drive off, the McLean County Museum of History offers a look at the area's past. For a longer drive, the Sangamon River is a river to visit.
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- 164households
- 29%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 12%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McLean County had 87,006 jobs in 2025, 2.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 33° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 63°. About 20 inches of snow and 39 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Normal 4NE weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in McLean County
- Rivian Motorway (Normal, Illinois)Assembly plants, light trucks on chassis of own manufacture5,309
- Illinois State UniversityUniversity or college3,570
- McLean County USD 5School district1,988FTE
- City of BloomingtonParks, nature1,113
- Carle Bromenn Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,030FTE
- St. Joseph Medical CenterGeneral hospital843FTE
- FerreroChocolate bars made from cocoa beans678
- Bloomington SD 87School district565FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 144 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 28,686 people in all across the county; Towanda has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively 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 Towanda’s 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 McLean County and the Bloomington, IL metro.
Towanda home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Towanda$265,949
- 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 Towanda address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Towanda — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.