Joplin, Montana.
Typical home $178,444 (-4.5% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$529 (+130%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $8,491 -5%
- $186,935$178,444 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $38,051 +27%
- $140,393$178,444 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.
- Joplin$937
- Montana$2,453
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Joplin, MT fell 4.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Joplin, Liberty County, Montana
Joplin, in Liberty County, had 159 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Liberty County was 2.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Liberty County work in farming, 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Joplin is a very small community in Liberty County, in the farm country of northern Montana, where neighbors are few and everyone is likely to know one another. Homes here cost less than in much of the country. Winters are long and cold, with a good deal of snow, while summers turn warm, and the year is on the dry side.
Work. Many residents work in farming, forestry and mining, and others in schools, hospitals and social care, the building trades or government. Across Liberty County, some of the largest workplaces are Logan Health Chester, a critical access hospital, Stricks Ag, a wholesaler of dry beans, and the Chester-Joplin-Inverness school district. The county's jobless rate is low, and the number of jobs grew a little last year.
Things to do. Lake Elwell is a reservoir, and it is a longer drive away. It is the one nearby place to get out on the water, and a trip there makes a day of it.
Report a mistake
- 26 mintypical commute
What people in Liberty County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Liberty County had 517 jobs in 2025, 0.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 29° and lows near 8°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 52°. About 35 inches of snow and 11 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Joplin weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Liberty County
- Logan Health ChesterCritical access hospital50FTE
- Stricks AgBeans, dry, merchant wholesalers36
- Chester-Joplin-Inverness El SchoolsSchool district35FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 125 people in all across the county; Joplin 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Joplin’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 Liberty County.
Joplin home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Joplin$178,444
- 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 Joplin address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Joplin — 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.