Ashley, Michigan.
Typical home $202,000 (+10.5% in a year). Alma, MI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$569 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $19,137 +10%
- $182,863$202,000 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $25,569 +14%
- $176,431$202,000 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.
- Ashley$1,060
- Michigan$1,384
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 26 years.
Typical home values in Ashley, MI rose 10.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ashley, Gratiot County, Michigan
Ashley is a village of 508 people in Gratiot County. Half its households earn more than $58,846 a year and half less, against $63,556 across Gratiot County; 16% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Gratiot County was 5.3% in August 2026, and the county had 3.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ashley is a very small village in Gratiot County, Michigan, where neighbors are likely to know one another. Household incomes run below the county's, and a good share of residents live below the poverty line. Homes are modestly priced, and relatively few adults hold a four-year degree.
Work. Most residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades also common. Among the largest workplaces across Gratiot County are MyMichigan Medical Center-Gratiot, Alma College and Gratiot-Isabella RESD Schools. The typical commute is long, and almost no one works from home. Unemployment across the county is about where it was a year ago, while the number of jobs has grown a little.
Things to do. The closest named spot is the Bad River, a short drive away. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to Sleepy Hollow State Park, a protected area, and to Lake Ovid, a reservoir. Winters are cold and summers warm, with a fair amount of rain and melted snow through the year.
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- 208households
- 21%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 35 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Gratiot County had 12,739 jobs in 2025, 3.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 18°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 62°. About 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Saint Johns weather station, 13 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Gratiot County
- Mymichigan Medical Center-gratiotGeneral hospital385FTE
- Alma CollegeUniversity or college365
- Gratiot-Isabella RESDSchool district355FTE
- Avalon & Tahoe ManufacturingBoats manufacturing300
- Alma Public SchoolsSchool district284FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters266
- MeijerRetail243
- Masonic PathwaysAssisted-living facilities with on-site nursing facilities208
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 41 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,369 people in all across the county; Ashley has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); 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
- Strong windVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively 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 Ashley’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 Gratiot County and the Alma, MI metro.
Ashley home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ashley$202,000
- Michigan$263,760
- 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.
Zip codes with a Ashley address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ashley — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.