Van Meter, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Van Meter city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,469 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #219 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 78% of them. The median age here is 35.8 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 Van Meter city earn a median of $133,750 a year, 70.3% above the national figure of $78,538 and 97% 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 3.2% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Van Meter city is valued at $250,300, 17.5% below the national figure and 60% above the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $947 a month, 32.6% below the national figure, or roughly $11,364 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 8.5% 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 1.9×, 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. 92% 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.