Cedar Falls, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Cedar Falls city is a small city in Iowa, with 40,662 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #14 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 98% of them. The median age here is 29.8 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Cedar Falls city earn a median of $74,165 a year, 5.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 9% above the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 15.6% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Cedar Falls city is valued at $252,500, 16.8% below the national figure and 62% above the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,177 a month, 16.3% below the national figure, or roughly $14,124 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19% 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 3.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 62.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 29.8 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.