Polk ZIP codes — Polk County, Iowa

Polk County is a mid-size city in Iowa, with 497,441 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates. The median age here is 36.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in Polk County earn a median of $81,621 a year, 3.9% above the national figure of $78,538. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 10.1% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Polk County is valued at $248,400, 18.1% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,113 a month, 20.8% below the national figure, or roughly $13,356 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 16.4% 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 3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 67.1% 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.

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.