Alberton, Montana.
Typical home $515,133 (+3.6% in a year). Missoula, MT metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,701 (+170%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $18,138 +4%
- $496,994$515,133 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $112,349 +28%
- $402,784$515,133 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Alberton$2,704
- Montana$2,453
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Alberton, MT rose 3.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Alberton, Mineral County, Montana
Alberton is a town of 452 people in Mineral County. Half its households earn more than $60,000 a year and half less, against $63,450 across Mineral County; 16% of its people live below the poverty line. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Mineral County was 3.8% in August 2026, and the county had 1.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in construction, then schools and health care.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Alberton is a very small town in Mineral County, Montana, and most homes in it are lived in by their owners. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and more people live below the poverty line than most would expect of a place this size. Typical home values are high next to what local incomes would suggest, and winters are cold and snowy, with the coldest weather in December and a warm, dry-leaning summer peaking in July.
Work. Residents work mostly in the building trades, in schools, hospitals and social care, in restaurants and hotels, and in government. Across Mineral County, the largest workplaces include Mineral Community Hospital, the Superior K-12 Schools and the Forest Service. Unemployment in the county is about where it was a year ago, though there are somewhat fewer jobs there than in the year before, and a small share of residents work from home.
Things to do. Lake Missoula is the best known of the nearby places, a lake a longer drive away, and Lolo National Forest, a protected area, is also a longer drive away. The Flathead River, also a longer drive away, offers another stretch of water for time outdoors. These are day trips rather than quick errands.
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- 22%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 10%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Mineral County had 1,203 jobs in 2025, 1.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 33° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 49°. About 49 inches of snow and 19 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Alberton weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Mineral County
- Mineral Community HospitalCritical access hospital72FTE
- Superior K-12 SchoolsSchool district58FTE
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture52
- Darlows Quality FoodsGrocery stores40
- St Regis K-12 SchoolsSchool district39FTE
- Alberton K-12 SchoolsSchool district36FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 1 workplace with 20 or more staff, 40 people in all across the county; Alberton has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Winter weatherVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Alberton’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Mineral County and the Missoula, MT metro.
Alberton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Alberton$515,133
- Montana$467,275
- United States$366,157
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Alberton10
Zip codes with a Alberton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Alberton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.