Austin, Minnesota.
Typical home $187,648 (+2.9% in a year), asking rent $1,161 (+9.2%). Austin, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$562 (+133%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $5,250 +3%
- $182,398$187,648 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $40,612 +28%
- $147,036$187,648 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.
- Austin$985
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Austin, MN rose 2.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Austin, MN rose 9.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Austin runs $186/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $344 in Mar 2024.
That is $1,347 a month against $1,161 rent: a $985 mortgage payment, plus $161 property tax and $201 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Austin
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$1,347
- Renting$1,161
- Mortgage only$985
Property tax · $161/mo 1.03% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Mower County, MN
Insurance & upkeep · $201/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Austin, Mower County, Minnesota
Austin is a city of 26,174 people in Mower County. Half its households earn more than $68,057 a year and half less, against $73,074 across Mower County; 12% of its people live below the poverty line. 72% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 28% are rented. Unemployment in Austin was 4.6% in August 2026, and Mower County had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in manufacturing, 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. Austin is a small city in southern Minnesota and the largest town in Mower County. Its residents are younger than the median in many small Midwestern towns, and most homes are lived in by their owners. Incomes run below the county's, and typical home values and rents are modest. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm.
Work. Manufacturing, schools, hospitals and social care, shops, and the building trades are where most residents find work. The largest workplaces in town are Hormel Foods Austin, the processed meats manufacturer, Mayo Clinic Health System's hospital, and the Austin Public School District. Unemployment is a little higher than it was a year ago, and the county has added only a few jobs over the past year. Commutes are short, and few people work from home.
Things to do. The Spam Museum is in town, and so are East Side Lake, a reservoir, and the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center, so a day out needs no long drive. For a longer drive, Rice Lake State Park and Lake Louise State Park are protected areas outside town.
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- 10,110households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 12%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Mower County had 16,974 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 22° and lows near 5°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 61°. About 43 inches of snow and 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Austin Waste Wtp Facility weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Austin
- Hormel Foods AustinProcessed meats manufacturing1,871
- Mayo Clnic Hlth Sys-albrt LEA AustinGeneral hospital1,393FTE
- Austin Public School DistrictSchool district738FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters308
- Riverland Community CollegeTwo-year college248
- Hy-VeeSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores204
- North America Packaging SolutionsContainer168
- Hormel InstituteAcademies, college or university153
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 34 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,259 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- TornadoesVery high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Hailrelatively high in parts of AustinRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Austin’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 Mower County and the Austin, MN metro.
Austin home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Austin$187,648
- Minnesota$348,778
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Austin listings, and the typical home goes pending in 35 days — the market is roughly in balance.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Austin25.14%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Austin35
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Austin127
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Austin38
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Austin$193,822
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Austin98.95%
Zip codes with a Austin address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Austin — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.