Union Star, Missouri.
Typical home $177,848 (+2.5% in a year). St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$472 (+102%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $4,378 +3%
- $173,470$177,848 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $16,036 +10%
- $161,812$177,848 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.
- Union Star$933
- Missouri$1,393
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 37 years.
Typical home values in Union Star, MO rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Union Star, DeKalb County, Missouri
Union Star is a town of 380 people in DeKalb County. Half its households earn more than $61,299 a year and half less, against $69,826 across DeKalb County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in DeKalb County was 3.9% in August 2026, and the county had 7.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in DeKalb 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Union Star is a very small town in DeKalb County, Missouri, where most people know one another by sight if not by name. Household incomes run below the county's, though few residents live below the poverty line, and a typical home here costs less than in many parts of the country. Winters are cold and summers are warm, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades close behind. Across DeKalb County, some of the largest workplaces are Cameron Regional Medical Center, Walmart and Maysville R-I Schools. Fewer people hold a four-year degree than in many places, and only a small number work from home. Unemployment in the county is lower than it was a year ago, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Several creeks lie within a short drive, including Crooked Creek, Little Third Fork and Agee Creek, and they suit anyone who likes time by the water. For an outing with more of a destination, the Glore Psychiatric Museum and the Missouri Theatre are both a longer drive away.
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- 16%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 6%work from home
What people in DeKalb County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. DeKalb County had 2,391 jobs in 2025, 7.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 35° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 67°. About 37 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cosby 2W weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in DeKalb County
- Cameron Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital331FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters243
- CNH Industrial CameronGeneral warehousing and storage104
- Maysville R-I SchoolsSchool district74FTE
- Dohrn Transfer Company56
- Clinco Sheltered IndustriesSheltered workshops51
- VB EnterprisesBuilding cleaning services, janitorial49
- Stewartsville C-2 SchoolsSchool district38FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 9 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,063 people in all across the county; Union Star 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
- TornadoesVery high
- DroughtRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Union Star’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 DeKalb County and the St. Joseph, MO-KS metro.
Union Star home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Union Star$177,848
- 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 Union Star address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Union Star — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.