Fairview, Montana.
Typical home $261,496 (+4.2% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$649 (+90%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,575 +4%
- $250,921$261,496 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $3,581 -1%
- $265,077$261,496 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.
- Fairview$1,373
- Montana$2,453
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Fairview, MT rose 4.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Fairview, Richland County, Montana
Fairview is a town of 896 people in Richland County. 86% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 14% are rented. Unemployment in Richland County was 2.4% in August 2026, and the county had 4.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then transport and warehouses.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Fairview is a small town in eastern Montana, close to the North Dakota line, where nearly everyone knows one another. Almost all homes are lived in by their owners, a much higher share than is usual across the country, and few residents hold a four-year degree. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, and summers turn properly warm by July. Precipitation is on the light side.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by transport, warehouses and utilities, then shops, with farming, forestry and mining also well represented. Across Richland County, the largest workplaces include Sidney Health Center, the Sidney elementary and high school districts, and Kraken Operating, an oil and gas field developer. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one. Unemployment across the county is low and unchanged from a year earlier, though the county had fewer jobs last year than the year before.
Things to do. The Yellowstone River is a short drive away, and so is the Missouri-Yellowstone Confluence Interpretive Center, a museum. Fort Buford, a historic fort, is also a short drive away. Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site, a protected area, is a longer drive but worth it for anyone interested in the region's fur-trade past.
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- 374households
- 13%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 1%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Richland County had 4,996 jobs in 2025, 4.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 27° and lows near 6°; warmest in July, with highs near 87° and lows near 57°. About 30 inches of snow and 16 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Sidney weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Richland County
- Sidney Health CenterCritical access hospital387FTE
- Sidney Elem SchoolsSchool district129FTE
- Sidney H S SchoolsSchool district64FTE
- Corland ConstructionCurb and gutter construction, residential and commercial driveway and parking area, concrete52
- Kraken OperatingOil and gas field development for own account40
- Agricultural Research ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture36
- Fairview Elem SchoolsSchool district36FTE
- Gem City MotorsLight utility truck dealers, new only or new and used31
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 8 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 255 people in all across the county; Fairview has two of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Fairview’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 Richland County.
Fairview home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Fairview$261,496
- Montana$467,275
- 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 Fairview address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Fairview — 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.