Charles City, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Charles City city is a mid-size town in Iowa, with 7,321 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #56 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 94% of them. The median age here is 42.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. 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 Charles City city earn a median of $56,734 a year, 27.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 16% below 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 13.4% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Charles City city is valued at $118,900, 60.8% below the national figure and 24% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $628 a month, 55.3% below the national figure, or roughly $7,536 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 13.3% 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. 65.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

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.