Chelsea, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Chelsea city is a very small community in Iowa, with 342 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #572 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 44% of them. The median age here is 35.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Chelsea city earn a median of $32,188 a year, 59% below the national figure of $78,538 and 53% 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 35.7% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Chelsea city is valued at $43,100, 85.8% below the national figure and 72% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $681 a month, 51.6% below the national figure, or roughly $8,172 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 25.4% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.3×, 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. 94.5% 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.

With 342 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Chelsea city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.