Cosmos, Minnesota.
Typical home $188,413 (+6.2% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$522 (+112%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,922 +6%
- $177,492$188,413 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $31,669 +20%
- $156,744$188,413 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.
- Cosmos$989
- 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 Cosmos, MN rose 6.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Cosmos, Meeker County, Minnesota
Cosmos is a city of 507 people in Meeker County. Half its households earn more than $56,635 a year and half less, against $75,446 across Meeker County; 15% of its people live below the poverty line. 83% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 17% are rented. Unemployment in Meeker County was 4.9% in August 2026, and the county had 2.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Meeker County work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Cosmos is a very small city in Meeker County, Minnesota, where the population is older than in most places and nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Incomes run well below the county's, and a larger share of people live in poverty than you might expect in a quiet farm-country town. Homes are modest in price, and few adults hold a four-year degree.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, shops and the building trades close behind. Across Meeker County, some of the biggest employers are Bobcat, which makes construction-type tractors and attachments, Meeker County Memorial Hospital, and the Litchfield Public School District. Jobs in the county have slipped a little over the past year, and unemployment is somewhat higher than it was a year ago. The typical commute is a fairly long one, and very few people work from home.
Things to do. Thompson Lake and Belle Creek are in or beside town, and several more lakes, including King Lake and Atkinson Lake, are a short drive away. Anyone willing to go a longer drive can see the biggest ball of twine, one of the best known roadside attractions in the region. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, so the lakes are mostly a warm-season pleasure, when summers turn pleasantly warm.
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- 265households
- 10%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 26 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What people in Meeker County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Meeker County had 7,838 jobs in 2025, 2.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 20° and lows near 0°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 60°. About 30 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Litchfield weather station, 15 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Meeker County
- BobcatConstruction-type tractors and attachments manufacturing293
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters244
- Cretex Medical - Component and Device TechnologiesMachine shops237
- Litchfield Public School DistrictSchool district217FTE
- Monroe Towmaster LLC (5300)Flatbed trailers, commercial, manufacturing209
- Meeker County Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital187FTE
- Premier Health Care ManagementSkilled nursing facilities170
- Custom Products Of LitchfieldSkids, metal, manufacturing127
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 45 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,875 people in all across the county; Cosmos has two of its own. 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
- Strong windVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Cosmos’ 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 Meeker County.
Cosmos home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Cosmos$188,413
- 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.
Zip codes with a Cosmos address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Cosmos — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.