Fountain, Michigan.
Typical home $176,459 (+4.5% in a year). Ludington, MI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$516 (+126%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,578 +4%
- $168,881$176,459 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $24,756 +16%
- $151,704$176,459 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.
- Fountain$926
- Michigan$1,384
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 23 years.
Typical home values in Fountain, MI rose 4.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Fountain, Mason County, Michigan
Fountain is a village of 170 people in Mason County. 92% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 8% are rented. Unemployment in Mason County was 5.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Mason 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Fountain is a very small village in Mason County, Michigan, where nearly all homes are lived in by their owners. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest. Rain and melted snow add up to a fair amount over the year.
Work. Residents of Fountain work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, shops, and restaurants and hotels. Across Mason County, the biggest employers include Corewell Health Ludington Hospital, Walmart and the Ludington Area School District. Few adults here hold a four-year degree, and the typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. Gun Lake lies in or beside town, which puts a lake close at hand. A longer drive brings you to Lake Michigan, the best known of the nearby places, and to Ludington State Park, a protected area. The Manistee River is also within a longer drive, for those who like time on the water.
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- 10%of adults have a degree
- 23 mintypical commute
What people in Mason County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Mason County had 10,162 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 30° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 80° and lows near 59°. About 36 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Manistee 3SE weather station, 13 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Mason County
- Corewell Health Ludington HospitalGeneral hospital307FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters286
- Indian SummerFruit and vegetable canning243
- House of FlavorsIce cream manufacturing241
- Ludington Area School DistrictSchool district229FTE
- MeijerRetail229
- West Shore Educational Service DistrictSchool district212FTE
- Mason County Central SchoolsSchool district149FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 35 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,270 people in all across the county; Fountain has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- Winter weatherVery high
- Strong windRelatively 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 Fountain’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 Mason County and the Ludington, MI metro.
Fountain home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Fountain$176,459
- Michigan$263,760
- 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 4 Fountain 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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Fountain19
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Fountain7
Zip codes with a Fountain address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Fountain — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Fountain
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 49410 | Fountain | 1,734 | — | $177,784 |
| 49402 | Branch | 1,411 | — | $210,254 |