Cook, Minnesota.
Typical home $254,201 (+6.3% in a year). Duluth, MN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$707 (+113%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $14,985 +6%
- $239,216$254,201 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $45,472 +22%
- $208,729$254,201 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.
- Cook$1,334
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 18 years.
Typical home values in Cook, MN rose 6.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cook, St. Louis County, Minnesota
Cook is a city of 534 people in St. Louis County. 67% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 33% are rented. Unemployment in St. Louis County was 5.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.4% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in St. Louis County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cook is a very small city in St. Louis County, in the north woods of Minnesota. A large majority of homes are lived in by their owners, and a typical home costs well under what many people pay elsewhere in the country. Winters are long and cold, with a great deal of snow, and summers are mild.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with shops, restaurants and hotels, and professional and business services also employing a good number. Some of the biggest workplaces in town are Cook Hospital & Care Center, North Woods School and Hill Wood Products. Jobs across the county have slipped slightly over the past year, and unemployment in the county has risen a little.
Things to do. The Rice River and Black Creek are both a short drive away, and the Iron Range Off-Highway Vehicle State Recreation Area is close by for riding. Lake Vermilion, one of the best known lakes in the area, is a longer drive away, as is the Lake Vermilion-Soudan Underground Mine State Park. With so much snow each winter, the outdoors stays part of life through the cold months as well as the warm ones.
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- 251households
- 12%below the poverty line
- 6%work from home
What people in St. Louis County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. St. Louis County had 95,078 jobs in 2025, 0.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 15° and lows near -5°; warmest in July, with highs near 77° and lows near 56°. About 61 inches of snow and 28 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cook 8NE weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cook
- Cook Hospital & Care CenterGeneral medical and surgical hospitals125
- North Woods SchoolK-12 education92
- Cook HospitalCritical access hospital73FTE
- Hill Wood ProductsWood flooring manufacturing36
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture31
- Oxford CapitolAssisted-living facilities with on-site nursing facilities30
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 283 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- LightningRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cook’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 St. Louis County and the Duluth, MN-WI metro.
Cook home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cook$254,201
- Minnesota$348,778
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Cook 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.
- Cook27.04%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cook39
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Cook address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cook — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.