State Center, IA population, income and ZIP codes

State Center city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,548 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #209 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 79% of them. The median age here is 35 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 State Center city earn a median of $72,303 a year, 7.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 7% 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 10% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in State Center city is valued at $156,300, 48.5% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $741 a month, 47.3% below the national figure, or roughly $8,892 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 2.2×, 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. 73.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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.