All Counties in Iowa, Eviction Risk 2026

Iowa's 99 counties span eviction-risk scores from 3.2 in Emmet County to 3.6 in Audubon County , a 0.4-point gap that captures how unevenly rent burdens, renter populations, and local tenant politics are distributed across the state. The statewide average sits at 3.3/10 (Low), but that single figure hides far more than it reveals, the table above scores every county on the same 1–10 scale so you can see exactly where landlord exposure concentrates.

The counties carrying the most eviction risk, Audubon County, Johnson County, Monroe County, are Iowa's denser, higher-cost markets. In Jackson County, renters spend an average of 34% of household income on rent, and 19% of its homes are renter-occupied, the cost pressure that pushes filings up and pulls tenant-protection ordinances into local politics. Larger metros also concentrate the legal-aid networks and renter-organizing capacity that lift a county's score above the rural baseline.

At the other end of the table, Emmet County, Boone County, Kossuth County score lowest. These tend to be smaller, more rural counties where homeownership is the norm, rent-to-income ratios run lower, and local rent-control or just-cause ordinances are rare or state-preempted. Evictions still happen there, but the structural pressure that drives a high score (heavy rent burden, a large renter majority, organized tenant advocacy) is simply weaker.

Each county score is a population-weighted aggregate of every city scored inside it, so a county with one expensive urban core and a dozen quiet suburbs lands somewhere in between. Click any county row to drill into its cities ranked one by one, a zoomed heat map, and a full breakdown of rent burden, renter share, poverty rate, and political margin. For the statutes that apply statewide regardless of county, notice periods, security-deposit caps, just-cause and rent-control rules, see the Iowa state overview.