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Place dossier plate
SheetIL-MONTGOMERY-IL · Montgomery, IL 21,205 pop · income 76th pct
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Montgomery
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Montgomery on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Dolton · lowest
58,706
Dolton · lowest
58,706 median HH income
43.0% of the leader · rank #1
Gilman · near
96,974
Gilman · near
96,974 median HH income
71.0% of the leader · rank #2
Gardendale · near
96,974
Gardendale · near
96,974 median HH income
71.0% of the leader · rank #3
Montgomery · this city
96,985
Montgomery · this city
96,985 median HH income
71.0% of the leader · rank #4
Soda Bay · near
96,994
Soda Bay · near
96,994 median HH income
71.0% of the leader · rank #5
Apple Valley · near
97,005
Apple Valley · near
97,005 median HH income
71.0% of the leader · rank #6
Geneva · highest
136,621
Geneva · highest
136,621 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Montgomery on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 21,205.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Montgomery - the verdict
Out of every US city with 1,000+ residents, Montgomery places in the 76th percentile for household income and the 63rd percentile for safety. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
76th
percentile, household income
60th
percentile, home value
18th
percentile, median rent
63rd
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Montgomery, IL
Montgomery is a small city in Illinois, home to 21,205 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Median household income here is $96,985 per year, placing it in the top quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 7.9%. Home values in Montgomery run a median of $270,700, and the median resident age is 35.1 years. Educational attainment runs 29.0% of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. Separately, 70.5% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 0 residential units were authorized in 2024 (No Permits), down 100% from five years earlier. Montgomery reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 1027.2 incidents per 100,000 residents, below the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Illinois tracks close to the national cost-of-living baseline: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 puts Illinois at 100.0 on a 100-equals-national-average scale (Near Average). A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,063 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $240 across Illinois, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. Natural-hazard exposure scores 54.5 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Low).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Montgomery's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from schools and households to reported crime to work and mobility to comparison shortlist to population change to housing and income; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Montgomery, city-specific coverage includes FBI reported-crime rates, local building permits, annual population history, commute-mode shares, matched public-school count.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
1. Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Montgomery?
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
The NCES join finds 5 public schools within the city match. 29.0% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Montgomery?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 1027.2 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 55% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
What does the journey to work look like in Montgomery?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 84.3%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Which cities make useful reference points for Montgomery?
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
Within Illinois, the closest population matches are Geneva (21,299 residents, $136,621 income); South Holland (21,016 residents, $87,378 income); Dolton (20,979 residents, $58,706 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Snellville, GA (21,203 residents); Lebanon, OH (21,216 residents); Carrboro, NC (21,170 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Population change
Is Montgomery growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population grew by +1,538 residents from 2020 to 2025, a +7.5% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 0 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point upward. Growth can increase housing demand and service needs, but the permit record must move in the same direction before calling it a supply response; the two series measure different things.
2020 estimate
20,440
2025 estimate
21,978
Period change
+7.5%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
How far does income reach against housing in Montgomery?
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 2.8 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 7.9%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
Value / income
2.8×
Home value
$270,700
Household income
$96,985
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
Above-average cost · BEA RPP 2024, Illinois average
C
City profile score · Montgomery, IL
58/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Household income B+
$96,985
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Violent crime B-
116 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Bachelor's+ share C
29.0%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Poverty rate D
7.9%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Cost of living D
100.0 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Montgomery profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Household income: 76/100 (B+) · $96,985
Violent crime: 67/100 (B-) · 116 /100k
Bachelor's+ share: 56/100 (C) · 29.0%
Poverty rate: 48/100 (D) · 7.9%
Cost of living: 40/100 (D) · 100.0 index
Where Montgomery sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Montgomery's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Montgomery highlighted among 10 peers.Read the chart values
Montgomery, IL (this city): home $270,700, crime 1,027/100k
Snellville, GA : home $293,400, crime 2,258/100k
Lebanon, OH : home $257,100, crime 1,205/100k
Carrboro, NC : home $507,100, crime 2,110/100k
Milwaukie, OR : home $477,200, crime 1,720/100k
Geneva, IL : home $415,800, crime 584/100k
South Holland, IL : home $201,200, crime 2,452/100k
Park Forest, IL : home $106,200, crime 1,791/100k
East Moline, IL : home $135,300, crime 2,670/100k
Grayslake, IL : home $293,900, crime 707/100k
How does Montgomery compare to other US cities?
Montgomery measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income76% higher than other cities
Home value60% pricier than other cities
Median rent18% pricier than other cities
Safety63% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
National percentiles can mask local variation. Looking only at Illinois, Montgomery ranks #251 of 455 Illinois cities by lowest crime rate - a narrower, more locally useful cut than the national comparison above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Montgomery against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Illinois only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Illinois-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Montgomery near the bottom of Illinois's cities
Among the 1,336 Illinois cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Montgomery ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Montgomery only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#245 of 1,311
81st percentile in Illinois
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,336
0th percentile in Illinois
Median Home Value
#192 of 1,315
85th percentile in Illinois
Poverty Rate
#608 of 1,335
54th percentile in Illinois
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#329 of 1,336
75th percentile in Illinois
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within Illinois only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
76th percentile nationally for median household income · 63rd percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Montgomery's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Montgomery's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Montgomery's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$270,70040th percentilemore affordable than 40% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Montgomery's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.8×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#5,533 of 15,516
More affordable than 64% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#641 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 2.8×, Montgomery sits in the affordable band:
national rank #5,533 of 15,516 and #641 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
The multiple is comparatively compact among tracked cities, but a low ratio can still coexist with slow demand or household-level hardship.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$96,985Montgomery, IL median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Montgomery, IL median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Montgomery, IL.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)29.0%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)7.9%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)70.5%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
21,205
Median Income
$96,985
Median Home Value
$270,700
Median Age
35.1
Poverty Rate
7.9%
Labor force participation
70.5%
Bachelor's Degree+
29.0%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
1027.2
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
115.6
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
911.6
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
5
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Montgomery's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
20,440 residents
2021
21,346 residents
2022
21,849 residents
2023
21,987 residents
2024
21,988 residents
2025
21,978 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
Total Permits (2024)
0
housing units authorized
Single-Family
0
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
207
63
144
$19.0M
2020
315
95
220
$28.3M
2021
194
58
136
$17.8M
2022
36
32
4
$4.0M
2023
3
1
2
$0.5M
2024
0
0
0
-
Permit volume decreased 100% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
84.3%
Carpool
3.2%
Public Transit
0.7%
Walk
0.3%
Work from Home
10.2%
Other
1.3%
Based on 11,230 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Illinois statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $240
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Illinois at $240 (electricity about $100 , water and sewer about $50 ).
These are Illinois statewide averages, not a meter reading for Montgomery. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Illinois's BEA cost-of-living index is 100.0 (Near Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Montgomery is $1,063/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Illinois statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 54.5 / 100 (Low).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Illinois statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Montgomery sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Montgomery compares to similar-size Illinois cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.