Brooten, Minnesota.
Typical home $231,735 (-1.2% in a year). St. Cloud, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$634 (+109%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $2,793 -1%
- $234,529$231,735 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $36,424 +19%
- $195,311$231,735 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.
- Brooten$1,216
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 20 years.
Typical home values in Brooten, MN fell 1.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Brooten, Stearns County, Minnesota
Brooten is a city of 626 people in Stearns County. 73% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 27% are rented. Unemployment in Stearns County was 4.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Stearns County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Brooten is a very small city in Stearns County, in west-central Minnesota. Most homes here are lived in by their owners, and typical home values are modest. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and restaurants and hotels also employing many. Across Stearns County, the largest workplaces include St. Cloud Hospital, Blattner Company, which builds structures for alternative energy, and the St. Cloud Public School District. Unemployment across the county has risen a little over the past year, and the number of jobs there has barely changed.
Things to do. Crow Lake and Grove Lake are both lakes a short drive away, handy for an afternoon by the water. A longer drive brings you to Sibley State Park, a protected area with room to walk and spend a day outdoors. Winters are snowy and summers warm, so the lakes and parks suit different seasons.
Report a mistake
- 237households
What people in Stearns County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Stearns County had 87,420 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 20° and lows near 1°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 50 inches of snow and 31 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the New London weather station, 16 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Stearns County
- Blattner CompanyAlternative energy structure construction7,828
- St. Cloud HospitalGeneral hospital3,585FTE
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs1,817
- St. Cloud Public School DistrictSchool district1,676FTE
- PilgrimsPoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing1,531
- Rasmussen University-MinnesotaUniversity or college1,367
- Saint Cloud State UniversityUniversity or college1,116
- New Flyer USAAssembly plants, heavy trucks, and buses on chassis of own manufacture936
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 291 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 46,167 people in all across the county; Brooten has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026), 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
- Strong windVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Brooten’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. 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 Stearns County and the St. Cloud, MN metro.
Brooten home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Brooten$231,735
- 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.
- Brooten5
Zip codes with a Brooten address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Brooten — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Brooten
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 56312 | Belgrade | 2,270 | — | $325,191 |
| 56316 | Brooten | 1,461 | — | $257,668 |