Whitewater, Kansas.
Typical home $231,467 (+5.2% in a year). Wichita, KS metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$688 (+131%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $11,531 +5%
- $219,935$231,467 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $61,294 +36%
- $170,172$231,467 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.
- Whitewater$1,215
- Kansas$1,291
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Whitewater, KS rose 5.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Whitewater, Butler County, Kansas
Whitewater is a city of 661 people in Butler County. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Butler County was 4.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Butler 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Whitewater is a very small Kansas city where almost everyone lives in a home they own, far more than across most of the country. Few residents fall below the poverty line, and the typical home is valued well within reach of a modest budget. Winters are cold, with some snow, and summers get hot, with a fair amount of rain through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, retail and professional and business services also employing many. Across Butler County, some of the largest workplaces are Butler Community College, Andover Schools and the El Dorado refinery run by HF Sinclair. The commute to work is a little longer than a quick drive across town, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. The Wichita Art Museum and the Sedgwick County Zoo are both a longer drive away, and they are among the better known places to visit in the region. For a day outdoors, Botanica, The Wichita Gardens, is a botanical garden a longer drive away. Wild West World, an amusement park, is also a longer drive from town.
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- 4%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What people in Butler County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Butler County had 19,973 jobs in 2025, 0.5% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 42° and lows near 20°; warmest in July, with highs near 92° and lows near 70°. About 9 inches of snow and 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Newton weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Butler County
- Butler Community CollegeTwo-year college683
- Andover SchoolsSchool district612FTE
- HF Sinclair, El Dorado RefiningPetroleum refineries486
- Kansas Medical CenterGeneral hospital297FTE
- Circle SchoolsSchool district292FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters242
- Augusta SchoolsSchool district235FTE
- El Dorado SchoolsSchool district235FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 44 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,932 people in all across the county; Whitewater has two 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
- WildfireRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Whitewater’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 Butler County and the Wichita, KS metro.
Whitewater home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Whitewater$231,467
- Kansas$246,055
- 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 Whitewater address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Whitewater — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.