Wesley, Iowa.
Typical home $181,240 (+0.4% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$418 (+79%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $752 +0%
- $180,488$181,240 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.
- Wesley$951
- Iowa$1,242
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Wesley, IA rose 0.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Wesley, Kossuth County, Iowa
Wesley is a city of 391 people in Kossuth County. 89% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 11% are rented. Unemployment in Kossuth County was 3.2% in August 2026, and the county had 1.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Kossuth 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Wesley is a very small city in Kossuth County, Iowa, where nearly everyone owns the home they live in. Homes cost less than in much of the country, and a small share of residents live below the poverty line. Few adults hold a four-year degree, and a few people work from home. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and nights well below freezing, while summers turn warm in July. Rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, farming and local shops. Across Kossuth County, the largest workplaces include Snap On Tools, Hormel Food and Trinity Health. Unemployment in the county is a little higher than a year ago, and the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Plum Creek, a river, is a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Ambrose A. Call State Park, a protected area, and to Clear Lake, a lake. These make good places for time outdoors and for getting out of town for the day.
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- 143households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 11%below the poverty line
- 7%work from home
What people in Kossuth County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kossuth County had 6,481 jobs in 2025, 1.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 25° and lows near 6°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 61°. About 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Algona weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Kossuth County
- Snap On ToolsTool boxes, light gauge metal, manufacturing400
- Hormel FoodProcessed meats manufacturing282
- Trinity HealthPhysicians' offices267
- Algona Comm School DistrictSchool district226FTE
- Kossuth Regional Health CenterCritical access hospital152FTE
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores146
- Aluma a/k/a KLM AcquisitionMetal fabrication118
- IA,Algona-GSS Algona Center-Nursing Care Facilities (Skilled Nursing Facilities)Nursing homes104
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 24 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,184 people in all across the county; Wesley 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Wesley’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 Kossuth County.
Wesley home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Wesley$181,240
- Iowa$236,623
- 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 Wesley address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Wesley — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.