Friend, Nebraska.
Typical home $221,767 (-2.5% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$633 (+119%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $5,753 -3%
- $227,520$221,767 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $46,733 +27%
- $175,034$221,767 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.
- Friend$1,164
- Nebraska$1,461
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Friend, NE fell 2.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Friend, Saline County, Nebraska
Friend is a city of 954 people in Saline County. Half its households earn more than $90,909 a year and half less, against $79,910 across Saline County; 6% of its people live below the poverty line. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Saline County was 3.0% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Saline County work in manufacturing, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Friend is a small city in Saline County, Nebraska, and most of its homes are lived in by their owners. Household incomes run above the county's, and fewer people live below the poverty line than you might expect for a town this size. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and a fair amount of snow, while July brings warm days, and the year brings a moderate amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in professional and business services. Across Saline County, some of the largest workplaces are Smithfield Foods, Nestle Purina Petcare and Doane University. Very few people work from home, and unemployment across the county has held steady compared with a year earlier.
Things to do. Warren's Opera House, a theatre, is in or beside town. A longer drive away are Salt Creek, a river, and Lee's Legendary Marbles and Collectables, a museum. For a day outdoors, Conestoga Lake, a reservoir, is also a longer drive away.
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- 462households
- 27%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 2%work from home
What people in Saline County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Saline County had 6,630 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 33° and lows near 13°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 64°. About 24 inches of snow and 29 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Friend 3E weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Saline County
- Smithfield FoodsPork carcasses, half carcasses, and primal and sub-primal cuts produced in slaughtering plants1,708
- Nestle Purina PetcareDog and cat food, manufacturing600
- Doane UniversityUniversity or college462
- Crete Public SchoolsSchool district374FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters169
- Crete Area Medical CenterCritical access hospital121FTE
- Fortrex - 0104 Smithfield Fresh Meats Corp. - CreteJanitorial services115
- Omaha IndustriesDog and cat food, manufacturing115
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 13 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,198 people in all across the county; Friend has two of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively 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 Friend’s 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 Saline County.
Friend home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Friend$221,767
- Nebraska$278,299
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Friend8
Zip codes with a Friend address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Friend — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.