Waterloo, Iowa.
Typical home $146,001 (-0.1% in a year), asking rent $909 (+5.1%). Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$374 (+95%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $184 -0%
- $146,184$146,001 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $27,159 +23%
- $118,842$146,001 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.
- Waterloo$766
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Waterloo, IA fell 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Waterloo, IA rose 5.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Waterloo runs $197/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $273 in Oct 2023.
That is $1,106 a month against $909 rent: a $766 mortgage payment, plus $183 property tax and $156 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Waterloo
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$1,106
- Renting$909
- Mortgage only$766
Property tax · $183/mo 1.50% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Black Hawk County, IA
Insurance & upkeep · $156/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 Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa
Waterloo is a city of 67,314 people in Black Hawk County. Half its households earn more than $57,480 a year and half less, against $66,417 across Black Hawk County; 17% of its people live below the poverty line. 62% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 38% are rented. Unemployment in Waterloo was 5.1% in August 2026, and Black Hawk County had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Waterloo is a city with a younger population than many places its size, and household incomes here run below the county's as a whole. More people rent their homes than is typical in the surrounding county, though most homes are still lived in by their owners. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days and a fair amount of rain across the year.
Work. Schools, hospitals and social care employ more residents than anything else, followed by manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels. Among the largest workplaces in Waterloo are Tyson Fresh Meats, MercyOne Waterloo Medical Center and the Waterloo Community School District. The job market has been soft lately, with unemployment about where it stood a year ago, and a four-year degree is less common among adults here than in many places. Commutes are short, and few people work from home.
Things to do. The Grout Museum sits in or beside town, and Riverfront Stadium is close by as well. A short drive away are the Hartman Reserve Nature Center, a protected area for walking and watching wildlife, and Lost Island Theme Park, an amusement park for a full day out with the family.
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- 29,283households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 17%below the poverty line
- 16 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Black Hawk County had 70,713 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 28° and lows near 11°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 64°. About 39 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Waterloo Municipal Airport weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Waterloo
- Tyson Fresh MeatsAnimal slaughtering2,863
- Mercyone Waterloo Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,961FTE
- Waterloo Comm School DistrictSchool district1,648FTE
- Allen Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,264FTE
- John Deere Waterloo Works Drive Train OperationsFarm tractors and attachments manufacturing1,168
- John DeereTractors and attachments, farm-type, manufacturing848
- Hawkeye Community CollegeTwo-year college746
- John DeereDiesel and semidiesel engines manufacturing678
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 95 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 18,397 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Tornadoesrelatively high in parts of WaterlooRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Waterloo’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 Black Hawk County and the Waterloo-Cedar Falls, IA metro.
Waterloo home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Waterloo$146,001
- Iowa$236,623
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Waterloo listings, and the typical home goes pending in 13 days — the market is cooling.
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.
- Waterloo29.96%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Waterloo13
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Waterloo255
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Waterloo84
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Waterloo$174,951
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Waterloo97.86%
Zip codes with a Waterloo address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Waterloo — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Waterloo
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50701 | Waterloo | 30,232 | $1,014 | $185,752 |
| 50702 | Waterloo | 20,882 | $861 | $149,921 |
| 50703 | Waterloo | 17,952 | $880 | $93,355 |