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Clive, Iowa

Christmas Light Installation In Clive, Iowa

Clive has the most valuable homes of any city we serve and no famous Christmas street at all. That is not a knock on Clive. It is an opening.

The Shape Of Clive

Clive Is A Ribbon, Not A Town Square

Clive was platted in 1882 as a rail shipping point and a coal area. Today a greenbelt trail runs nearly the whole length of it.

11+ mi

Of paved trail in the Clive greenbelt system, which runs from 73rd Street all the way to 156th Street. The city says it "stretches nearly the entire length of our City" and calls it "the crown jewel of the City of Clive parks and trail system".

City of Clive, Greenbelt Trail
7.64

Square miles of land in the whole city. Put that beside a trail running end to end from 73rd Street to 156th Street and the shape of Clive explains itself.

U.S. Census Bureau, Clive city land area
Zero

Lights contests, judged displays or metro lights roundup entries we could find in Clive. We looked hard. There is no famous Clive Christmas street.

Our own search, August 2026

No tradition to compete with, and that is the point

Clive's own brand is "Distinct by Nature", and it comes from that greenbelt. The city sits in two counties, Polk and Dallas, and the trail follows Walnut Creek the whole way through.

Here is the honest bit. Windsor Heights runs a judged citywide lighting contest. Ankeny has Gingerbread Lane, a 31-year tradition with 31 houses on one street all taking part. Urbandale's city government hangs more than 100,000 lights in a park. Clive has none of that. There is no contest, no famous block, and no entry on any metro roundup of places to drive.

We are not going to invent one to make this page sound better. What that actually means for you is simpler than a tradition: on a Clive street, the first well-lit roofline is the one people notice. You are not competing with a block that has been doing this since the nineties. You are setting the standard on it.

Want the number for your Clive house? It takes no appointment.

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Clive Homes

Clive Has The Highest Home Values We Work In

And a housing stock that is younger than almost anybody guesses.

$401,100 median value

The median owner-occupied home value in Clive is $401,100. That is comfortably the highest of every city we researched. Waukee comes in at $350,500, Urbandale at $335,500 and West Des Moines at $320,200.

7,363 homes, middle one built in 1995

Clive has 7,363 housing units and a median build year of 1995. 2,168 of them, 29 percent of everything in the city, went up in the 1990s alone. One decade built nearly a third of Clive.

4.9 percent predate 1940

Only 362 Clive homes are older than 1940. 67 percent of units are detached single-family, and the census recorded zero mobile homes in the city. Clive is a 1990s subdivision city with a small nineteenth century seed.

The seed is still standing

Clive was platted on January 18, 1882 by the Union Land Company as a rail shipping point and a coal area. It had 752 residents in 1960. It has roughly 19,012 today.

You can still find the old town. The railway depot at 86th and Swanson dates from about 1882, and Swanson Grocery at 8641 Swanson Boulevard was built in 1911 and now houses the Clive Historical Society.

Why there is no price on this page

A home value does not tell us anything about your roof. What we price is feet of roofline and how many peaks are in it, and that is the biggest single piece of any quote.

So we measure your house instead of guessing from a city average. Tate reads the runs and counts the peaks off satellite imagery for your address, then sends a number back.

American Community Survey 2020 to 2024, tables B25024, B25034 and B25035

Every Clive house gets measured on its own. The estimate is free.

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The HOA Question

We Read Clive's Biggest Covenant Cover To Cover

"Will my association let me" is the question nobody answers with evidence. So we went and read one.

Roughly 1,300 homes in two associations

The Country Club Owners Association has about 650 members on lakeside, tree-lined streets. Country Club West and Woods was established in January 1992 and covers 651 lots and 646 single-family homes, plus two churches, two city parks and a stretch of the Greenbelt Trail.

Dues at Country Club West run $40 a year. Between the two, that is roughly 1,300 Clive homes living under an organized association.

What the Country Club West covenant restricts

We read the published Summary of Covenants from 2012 in full. It has rules about mobile homes, setbacks, driveways, garages, dog runs, pools, recreational vehicles, fences, sodding and how tall your grass is allowed to get. It is not a light-touch document.

It says nothing at all about holiday lights, seasonal displays, exterior decorations, string lights, or how long a display may stay up. Not one line.

The limits of what we just told you

That is one document, and we will not stretch it further than it goes. Country Club West's full 25-page Declaration and its 5-page Protective Covenants are scanned images with no searchable text, so we could not read those. The Country Club Owners Association's own rules would not load for us at all.

So the claim is exactly this and no bigger: we read that covenant and found nothing about holiday lights. We are not going to tell you what every Clive association allows, and anybody who does is guessing. If you want certainty for your own subdivision, Iowa records declarations for all 99 counties and they are free to search at iowalandrecords.org.

The city's own rules do not reach your roof either

Clive adopted a Development Standards Manual on 1 February 2024, 85 pages of it. People assume that kind of document governs what a house looks like. It does not. Section XV opens by saying the architectural standards "apply to all commercial and multi-family new buildings". Single-family homes are explicitly out of scope. There is no roof pitch, slope or material requirement for a single-family house anywhere in it, and the whole document never mentions holiday, Christmas, seasonal or temporary decorative lighting.

One thing it does require is worth knowing: single-family and townhome developments have to plant two trees per dwelling unit. That is the only sourced tree fact we have for this city, and it matters if you want trunks wrapped as well as the roof lit. Clive is also a 2026 Tree City USA recipient.

And Clive has no city ordinance on holiday decorations, seasonal lighting or a takedown deadline. No city in this metro does. We checked all of them.

Send the address. Tate reads the Clive roofline off satellite imagery.

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December In Clive

What Clive Does Have In December

One civic evening, and it comes with goats.

The Mayor's Tree Lighting

The city has held its Mayor's Tree Lighting at the City Hall and library complex, 1900 NW 114th Street, on a Friday evening in early December, from 5:30 to 7:00. That is the one year we could document, so check the city's own page before you plan around it.

There are lighted hayrack rides, and the Greenbelt Goats turn up. It is a genuinely nice evening, and it is also the whole of Clive's residential holiday calendar.

The Greenbelt Goats are real

About twenty goats and one sheep have been clearing bush honeysuckle and garlic mustard out of the Clive greenbelt since late 2019. They have their own account, @CliveGoats, and a following.

We mention them because they say something true about this city. Clive's identity is the creek and the trail, not a decorated street. Nobody drives Clive to look at houses. Not yet.

Being Straight With You

When You Should Just Do It Yourself In Clive

Three honest notes for this city

If your lot backs onto the greenbelt, do not pay to light the back. The side facing the trail and the creek is the side almost nobody sees from a car. Spend it on the street elevation instead. We will tell you that on the walk-around, and it usually takes money off the number rather than adding it.

Tell us who the display is for. The street, or your own front window. If what you want is for the walk up to your own door to look right, lighting every last peak may not be what you actually want, and we will size the job to that instead.

A simple front run you can reach is a fair afternoon on your own. If your house gives you one straight gutter line at step ladder height and you enjoy the job, do it. Where it stops being worth it is the big front elevation, the multiple gable ends, and the peak you cannot get to.

Real Rooflines

Work Around Clive

Real houses we lit. No stock photos.

C9 bulbs cut to fit the eaves, porch roof and front gable of a suburban home at night
Multicolor C9 bulbs spaced evenly along a roofline and garage peak on a winter evening
Warm white C9 bulbs running a clean straight line along the front gutter of a home
What You Get

One Price, From October To Storage

  • Commercial-grade C9 bulbs, cut to fit your roofline
  • Pro-grade clips that attach without nails or screws wherever the roofline allows
  • Maintenance all season, with a bulb out or a loose clip fixed within 48 hours
  • Takedown in January, booked with you
  • Storage of your set until the following October, labeled for your address

The hardware is yours once the job is paid for. We hold it for you between seasons so it is not taking up your garage, and we bring your own set back out the next October.

Tate is the one on the roof. You are hiring the owner of a small local outfit, not a call center that sends whoever is free that week.

Go deeper: what drives the price • what we install • how the clips attach • how storage works • get an estimate

Next door: Urbandale • Waukee • West Des Moines

Get Your Free Clive Roofline Estimate

Send the address. Tate pulls satellite imagery of your Clive roofline, measures the runs, counts the peaks, and texts a real ballpark back. Usually the same day. Nobody comes to your house for this part.

Get your Clive estimate

Two fields. Tate reads your roofline off satellite imagery and texts a ballpark back, usually the same day. No appointment needed for that part.

Required: texting is how Tate sends your estimate and confirms your install date.

The estimate is free and there is no obligation. Installs start mid-October and the calendar fills before Thanksgiving, so earlier is better.

Would rather just ask? Call or text Tate at 515-585-9079.

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