These two get compared more than any other pair I work with, and the comparison usually starts in the wrong place. People ask which city is better. The useful question is which trade you would rather make, because Polk City and Ankeny are not competing on the same terms at all.
One is a small lake town of about 5,500 people. The other is a city of nearly 68,000 with its own retail economy. Here is the honest breakdown from someone who works both markets.
Polk City - population 5,543, ZIP 50226, Polk County. North Polk Community School District. Sits on Saylorville Lake. About 12 minutes to Ankeny, 22 minutes to downtown Des Moines.
Ankeny - population 67,887, ZIPs 50021 and 50023, Polk County. Ankeny Community School District, one of the largest in the metro. About 15 minutes to downtown Des Moines in normal traffic, 20 to 25 minutes to the airport, roughly 30 minutes to Ames.
Population figures are 2020 US Census. That is a twelvefold difference in size, and nearly everything below follows from it.
Ankeny sits directly on I-35 north of Des Moines. That is the entire reason it grew the way it did. You are in the metro for work, dinner or a flight in under half an hour, and the interstate does the work for you.
Polk City runs Highway 415 to I-35, which adds roughly seven to ten minutes each way against an Ankeny address. Call it 20 to 25 minutes to downtown Des Moines. That is still a reasonable commute by metro standards, but it is a real difference twice a day, five days a week.
The honest way to price that: about 15 extra minutes a day, or roughly 60 hours a year. Whether that is worth it depends entirely on what you are getting for it, which is the next section.
Newer construction in Polk City generally runs $375K to $650K, and in Ankeny's established mid-1990s and 2000s subdivisions you are typically looking at $300K to $550K. Those bands overlap more than people expect.
The difference is not really price per square foot. It is inventory depth. Ankeny has four distinct submarkets, which means at any given moment there are multiple homes competing for your offer. Polk City has a handful of neighborhoods and a much thinner listing count, so when the right house appears you have less time and less leverage.
That cuts both ways. Thin inventory means fewer choices as a buyer. It also means less competition when you eventually sell.
Run the actual monthly numbers on any address in either city with the Deal Calculator before you decide what you can carry.
North Polk Community School District serves roughly 2,400 students district-wide. Ankeny Community School District is one of the largest public systems in the metro, with two comprehensive high schools and a feeder structure that shows up directly in home prices.
Neither of those facts tells you which is better for your student. What they tell you is the shape of the experience: a smaller district means a higher chance of making a varsity roster and a smaller graduating class, and a larger one means more course offerings, more activities and more specialization.
For actual performance data rather than my opinion, the Iowa Department of Education's School Performance Profiles is the current objective source. Pull both districts up side by side before you let schools decide your address.
Polk City's case is Saylorville Lake, about 5,520 surface acres at normal pool according to the US Army Corps of Engineers, plus Big Creek State Park and the Neal Smith Trail. Boat access, beaches and trailheads are minutes from most addresses in town. If open water is something you would actually use most weekends, no Des Moines suburb matches it.
Ankeny's case is that you do not drive for anything. Prairie Trail gives you walkable mixed-use, there is a full retail and restaurant base, and the High Trestle Trail runs through it. You trade the lake for never planning a trip to buy groceries.
Be honest with yourself about which one you will use in February. Lake access is a summer argument that has to survive a Central Iowa winter.
This is where the two genuinely diverge, and where I would push back on anyone treating them as interchangeable.
Ankeny has the population base, the rental demand and the duplex stock. A house hack there has a deeper tenant pool, which shows up as shorter vacancy and more comparable rents to underwrite against. If your plan is to buy a duplex, live in one side and rent the other, Ankeny gives you far more shots on goal.
Polk City is a thinner rental market by simple arithmetic. Fewer people, fewer units, fewer comps. That does not make it a bad investment, but it does mean you should underwrite conservatively and not assume an Ankeny vacancy rate.
Either way, the deal has to pencil on paper before it pencils in real life. I publish the numbers on my own properties for exactly this reason.
Polk City makes sense if lake access is something you will genuinely use, you want a smaller school district, and the extra ten minutes each way does not bother you. You are buying a specific lifestyle and paying for it in commute time and inventory depth.
Ankeny makes sense if you want the shortest commute, the deepest selection of homes, a full amenity base within the city, and the strongest rental fundamentals if you are buying with an investment lens.
I work both markets every week and I have no incentive to point you at either one. If you want to walk through the numbers on a specific address, or compare two actual listings side by side, get in touch and we will run them together. If you are selling first, start with what your current home is worth on the home value tool.
Jackson Krile | Flanders Team | RE/MAX Real Estate Center
515.490.8614 · [email protected]
Let's talk through your specific situation - no pressure.