Story ZIP codes — Story County, Iowa

Story County is a small city in Iowa, with 98,592 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates. The median age here is 27 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Story County earn a median of $69,006 a year, 12.1% below the national figure of $78,538. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 18.6% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Story County is valued at $243,600, 19.7% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,019 a month, 27.5% below the national figure, or roughly $12,228 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.7% 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 3.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 56% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 27 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

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.