Cardwell, Montana.
Typical home $569,455 (+0.2% in a year). Helena, MT metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,877 (+169%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $977 +0%
- $568,478$569,455 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $122,237 +27%
- $447,218$569,455 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.
- Cardwell$2,989
- 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 Cardwell, MT rose 0.2% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cardwell, Madison County, Montana
Cardwell, in Madison County, had 62 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Madison County was 4.8% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Madison County work in schools and health care, then farming.
Written by AI Claude Haiku 5.5 wrote this on 22 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cardwell is a very small community in Madison County, in southwestern Montana, where neighbors tend to know one another. The winters are cold, with the coldest weather in December, and the summers are warm, with July the warmest month. The town gets a modest amount of rain and melted snow over the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, or in farming, forestry and mining. Restaurants, hotels and entertainment, along with the building trades, also employ people here. Jobs across the wider county have eased a little lately.
Things to do. The Missouri River is a longer drive away and offers one of the best known river settings in the area. Lewis and Clark Caverns, a tourist attraction, is a short drive away. The Boulder River runs in or beside town, so it is the easiest water to reach on foot.
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What people in Madison County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Madison County had 2,981 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 33° and lows near 15°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 54°. About 13 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Trident weather station, 24 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Madison County
- Big Sky ResortAlpine skiing facilities with accommodations1,100
- Bozeman Health Big Sky Medical CenterHospitals, general medical and surgical94
- Madison Valley Medical CenterCritical access hospital84FTE
- Big SKY Medical CenterCritical access hospital72FTE
- Williams Plumbing and Heating- Big SkyBathroom plumbing fixture and sanitary ware installation70
- Ennis K-12 SchoolsSchool district65FTE
- Ruby Valley HospitalCritical access hospital52FTE
- HighlineResidential construction, single-family, general contractors51
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,569 people in all across the county; Cardwell has none 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- LightningVery high
- Cold wavesVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cardwell’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 Madison County and the Helena, MT metro.
Cardwell home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cardwell$569,455
- 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.
- Cardwell7
Zip codes with a Cardwell address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cardwell — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.