Cold Spring, Minnesota.
Typical home $361,997 (+2.1% in a year). St. Cloud, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,009 (+113%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,459 +2%
- $354,538$361,997 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $67,495 +23%
- $294,502$361,997 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.
- Cold Spring$1,900
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Cold Spring, MN rose 2.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cold Spring, Stearns County, Minnesota
Cold Spring is a city of 4,164 people in Stearns County. 66% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 34% 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 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cold Spring is a small city in Stearns County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and a four-year degree is held by a good share of adults. Winters are long and cold, with heavy snow, and summers are warm. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in manufacturing.
Work. Among the largest workplaces in Cold Spring are Pilgrims, Cold Spring Brewing Company and the Rocori Public School District. Unemployment across Stearns County is higher than a year earlier, and the number of jobs in the county has barely changed. Typical commutes are moderate, and only a small share of people work from home.
Things to do. Birch Lakes State Forest, a protected area, lies in or beside town. A short drive away are the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library and Saint John's Arboretum, a botanical garden. Lake Maria State Park, another protected area, is a longer drive away.
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- 1,855households
- 31%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents 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 21° and lows near 4°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 61°. About 57 inches of snow and 31 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Collegeville St. John's weather station, 9 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cold Spring
- PilgrimsPoultry slaughtering, dressing, and packing1,531
- Cold Spring Brewing CompanyArtificially carbonated waters manufacturing638
- Rocori Public School DistrictSchool district316FTE
- Benedictine Living Community - Cold SpringNursing homes197
- Cold Spring ElementaryAcademies, elementary or secondary98
- District Education BuildingAcademies, elementary or secondary30
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,680 people in all. School districts come 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
- 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 Cold Spring’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 Stearns County and the St. Cloud, MN metro.
Cold Spring home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cold Spring$361,997
- 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 3 Cold Spring listings — 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.
- Cold Spring35.03%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cold Spring31
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cold Spring14
Zip codes with a Cold Spring address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cold Spring — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.