Shell Rock, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Shell Rock city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,634 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #198 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 80% of them. The median age here is 36.8 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 Shell Rock city earn a median of $70,556 a year, 10.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 4% above the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 6% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Shell Rock city is valued at $159,100, 47.6% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $750 a month, 46.7% below the national figure, or roughly $9,000 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 12.8% 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 2.3×, 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. 82.5% 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. 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.