Bird Island, Minnesota.
Typical home $181,317 (+5.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$545 (+134%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,796 +6%
- $171,520$181,317 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $36,226 +25%
- $145,090$181,317 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.
- Bird Island$952
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Bird Island, MN rose 5.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Bird Island, Renville County, Minnesota
Bird Island is a city of 1,005 people in Renville County. 87% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 13% are rented. Unemployment in Renville County was 5.4% in August 2026, and the county had 2.0% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then farming.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Bird Island is a small farm-country city in Renville County, Minnesota, where nearly everyone owns the home they live in and homes cost less than in much of the country. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm days and moderate rain through the year. A small share of adults hold a four-year degree, and most people have a short drive to work.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by farming, transport and warehousing, and manufacturing. Across Renville County, the largest workplaces include the Southern Minnesota Beet sugar cooperative, Olivia Hospital and Clinics, and the Bird Island-Olivia-Lake Lillian school district. Unemployment across the county is a little higher than a year ago, though the county has added jobs over the past year.
Things to do. Fort Ridgely State Park, a protected area, is a longer drive away and sits beside Fort Ridgely, one of the region's historic forts. The Renville County Historical Museum, also a longer drive away, covers local history. For time by the water, Thompson Lake is another longer drive.
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- 428households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Renville County had 5,595 jobs in 2025, 2.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 21° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 59°. About 38 inches of snow and 28 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Olivia 3E weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Renville County
- Southern Minnesota Beet sugar cooperativeRaw beet sugar manufacturing505
- Renville CountyExecutive and legislative office combinations224
- HealthPartners, Inc.General medical and surgical hospitals137
- RCW KK-12 education109
- Transystems LLC - Renville ProjectAgricultural products trucking, local106
- Olivia Hospital and ClinicsCritical access hospital103FTE
- Bird Island-olivia-lake Lillian SchoolsSchool district88FTE
- Buffalo Lake Healthcare CenterSkilled nursing facility85
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 19 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,745 people in all across the county; Bird Island has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) 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 windRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bird Island’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Renville County.
Bird Island home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bird Island$181,317
- Minnesota$348,778
- 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.
- Bird Island8
Zip codes with a Bird Island address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bird Island — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.