Council Bluffs, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Council Bluffs city is a small city in Iowa, with 62,564 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #10 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 39 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Council Bluffs city earn a median of $64,092 a year, 18.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 5% 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 13.2% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Council Bluffs city is valued at $164,300, 45.8% below the national figure and 5% above the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $980 a month, 30.3% below the national figure, or roughly $11,760 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.3% 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 2.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 64.1% 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.

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.