Lake City, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Lake City city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,652 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #194 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 81% of them. The median age here is 46.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Lake City city earn a median of $64,375 a year, 18% below the national figure of $78,538 and 5% below the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 13.2% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Lake City city is valued at $103,300, 66% below the national figure and 34% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $761 a month, 45.9% below the national figure, or roughly $9,132 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 14.2% 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 1.6×, 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. 75.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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.