When buyers ask me about small towns along the I-35 corridor that still have room to grow — and still feel like a real community — Huxley, Iowa comes up almost every time. Living in Huxley, Iowa isn't a compromise. For the right buyer, it's a strategic decision that gets you the small-town character you're looking for without actually sacrificing access to the metro.
I've helped buyers land in Huxley over the years, and I always walk them through the same four things before we ever pull up a listing. Here's the honest version of what it's like to live there.
Huxley is in Story County, right on I-35 — roughly 20 minutes north of Ankeny and about 15 minutes south of Ames. That corridor position is the whole pitch. You can be in downtown Des Moines in about 40 minutes on a normal morning, at Iowa State University in under 20, and at the Ankeny employment centers (lots of distribution, healthcare, and manufacturing out there) in 15-20 minutes.
For buyers who work in Ames or at Iowa State and want more square footage and quieter streets than what Ames offers at the same price — Huxley is often the answer. For buyers coming from the Des Moines metro who want out of the suburban density but don't want a 45-minute commute, it threads the needle.
Huxley feeds into the Ballard Community School District, which is one of the more consistently strong rural district systems in central Iowa. Ballard is small enough that your kid isn't a number — class sizes are tighter, involvement is higher, and the school culture tends to be genuinely community-oriented.
If you're relocating from a larger metro and you're used to the volume and variability of a big district, the transition to Ballard is usually a pleasant surprise. Athletic programs are strong. The district serves several small communities in the area, not just Huxley, which keeps things collaborative.
Worth noting for your home search: Story County has a different property tax structure than Polk County (where Ankeny sits). Get your lender to run an accurate payment estimate using Story County rates — not the Polk County ones that auto-populate in some calculators.
The pricing in Huxley tends to run modestly below Ankeny for comparable square footage — which is part of the appeal for buyers who've been priced out of some of the newer Ankeny subdivisions. You'll typically find a mix of established single-family homes from the 1990s-2000s alongside newer builds pushing into the $300,000s and above.
Inventory in Huxley is genuinely thin. It's a small town — there are maybe a handful of active listings at any given point. When something comes up that fits, it tends to move. I recommend setting up a direct MLS alert so you're seeing new Huxley listings the moment they hit, not a day later when the algorithm finally surfaces them.
Huxley doesn't have the dining, shopping, or entertainment infrastructure of Ankeny or Ames. If you want walkable restaurants, a gym you can walk to, or a Target five minutes away — this isn't that. You're driving to Ames or Ankeny for most of that.
For some buyers that's a dealbreaker. For others — especially remote workers, families with young kids, or people who've grown weary of suburban sprawl — the trade-off feels like a feature, not a bug. I've seen buyers who thought they needed to be in Ankeny fall completely in love with Huxley once they drove around on a Saturday morning and felt the pace of it.
Living in Huxley, Iowa works really well for a specific kind of buyer: someone who values community feel over convenience density, needs I-35 access for their commute, and wants more home per dollar than the closer-in suburbs offer. It doesn't work for everyone — and I'd rather tell you that up front than show you 10 houses in a place that isn't the right fit.
If you're curious about Huxley or any of the other corridor communities between Ankeny and Ames — Slater, Elkhart, Polk City, Story City — reach out. Happy to walk through the trade-offs with you before you start the search.
Let's talk through your specific situation — no pressure.