Clarkfield, Minnesota.
Typical home $108,818 (+7.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$315 (+123%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Up $7,826 +8%
- $100,992$108,818 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $18,441 +20%
- $90,377$108,818 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.
- Clarkfield$571
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 19 years.
Typical home values in Clarkfield, MN rose 7.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Clarkfield, Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota
Clarkfield is a city of 852 people in Yellow Medicine County. Half its households earn more than $63,359 a year and half less, against $74,000 across Yellow Medicine County; 11% of its people live below the poverty line. 79% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 21% are rented. Unemployment in Yellow Medicine County was 5.9% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Clarkfield is a small city in Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, with a younger population than many small towns, and incomes that run below the county's as a whole. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and typical home values are modest. Winters are long and cold, with a good deal of snow, and summers are warm.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, manufacturing, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Yellow Medicine County, some of the largest workplaces are Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Yellow Medicine East Schools and Avera Granite Falls. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. Spring Creek, a river, is a short drive away. A longer drive brings you to Lac qui Parle, a reservoir, and Lac qui Parle State Park, a protected area along its shores. The Fagen Fighters WWII Museum is also a longer drive away.
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- 367households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 11%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Yellow Medicine County had 3,610 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 22° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 60°. About 46 inches of snow and 29 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Montevideo 1SW weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Yellow Medicine County
- Minnesota West Community and Technical CollegeTwo-year college254
- Yellow Medicine East SchoolsSchool district112FTE
- Avera Granite FallsCritical access hospital108FTE
- Sanford Hospital CanbyCritical access hospital91FTE
- Canby Public School DistrictSchool district81FTE
- Clarkfield Care CenterNursing homes62
- City of Granite FallsCity and town managers' offices52
- UPSCouriers and express delivery services48
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 19 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,134 people in all across the county; Clarkfield has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- Heat wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Clarkfield’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 Yellow Medicine County.
Clarkfield home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Clarkfield$108,818
- 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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Clarkfield address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Clarkfield — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.