Cortez, Colorado.
Typical home $338,479 (+0.9% in a year), asking rent $1,747 (+6.2%).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$952 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,959 +1%
- $335,520$338,479 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $56,934 +20%
- $281,545$338,479 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.
- Cortez$1,777
- Colorado$2,777
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 19 years.
Typical home values in Cortez, CO rose 0.9% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Cortez, CO rose 6.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Cortez runs $473/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $625 in May 2025.
That is $2,221 a month against $1,747 rent: a $1,777 mortgage payment, plus $82 property tax and $362 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Cortez
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,221
- Renting$1,747
- Mortgage only$1,777
Property tax · $82/mo 0.29% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Montezuma County, CO
Insurance & upkeep · $362/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Cortez, Montezuma County, Colorado
Cortez is a city of 8,766 people in Montezuma County. Half its households earn more than $54,247 a year and half less, against $65,244 across Montezuma County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 66% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 34% are rented. Unemployment in Montezuma County was 5.3% in August 2026, and the county had 1.4% 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. Cortez is a small city in southwestern Colorado, and its people are somewhat younger than in much of the country. Incomes run below the county's, and more people live below the poverty line than most would expect. Most homes are lived in by their owners. Winters are cold, with a fair amount of snow, and summers are hot and fairly dry.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in professional and business services, and in the building trades. The largest workplaces in Cortez include the Montezuma-Cortez School District, Southwest Memorial Hospital and King Soopers. The trip to work is short, and few people work from home. Unemployment in the county is higher than a year ago, and the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Mesa Verde National Park is a short drive away, and Yucca House National Monument, an archaeological site, is close by as well. The Anasazi Heritage Center, a museum on the region's early peoples, is also a short drive. For a longer outing, Hovenweep National Monument is another archaeological site, set farther off.
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- 3,715households
- 27%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 15 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Montezuma County had 9,321 jobs in 2025, 1.4% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 17°; warmest in July, with highs near 90° and lows near 57°. About 33 inches of snow and 12 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Cortez weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cortez
- Montezuma-Cortez School District No. Re-1School district377FTE
- Southwest Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital271FTE
- King SoopersSupermarkets and other grocery except convenience stores111
- Helen of Troy NevadaSewing machines, household-type, merchant wholesalers70
- SafewaySupermarkets and other grocery stores70
- Sodexo at Southwest Health SystemFood service contractors41
- TruWestAutomobile dealers, new only or new and used39
- Intermountain HealthAir ambulance services24
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 9 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 781 people in all. School districts come 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
- LightningVery high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- AvalanchesRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cortez’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Montezuma County.
Cortez home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cortez$338,479
- Colorado$529,013
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Cortez listings — the market is cooling.
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.
- Cortez21.09%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Cortez115
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Cortez24
Zip codes with a Cortez address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cortez — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.