Palo, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Palo city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,173 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #258 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 74% of them. The median age here is 32.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Palo city earn a median of $103,646 a year, 32% above the national figure of $78,538 and 53% above 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 3.3% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Palo city is valued at $274,200, 9.6% below the national figure and 75% above the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,063 a month, 24.4% below the national figure, or roughly $12,756 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 12.3% 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. 95.3% 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.

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.