Carter Lake, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Carter Lake city is a small town in Iowa, with 3,773 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #107 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 89% of them. The median age here is 40.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Carter Lake city earn a median of $75,037 a year, 4.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 11% above the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 15.2% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Carter Lake city is valued at $161,200, 46.9% below the national figure and 3% above the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,115 a month, 20.7% below the national figure, or roughly $13,380 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 84.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.