Lafayette, Minnesota.
Typical home $255,258 (+5.5% in a year). Mankato, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$770 (+135%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,337 +6%
- $241,921$255,258 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $65,051 +34%
- $190,207$255,258 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.
- Lafayette$1,340
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Lafayette, MN rose 5.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lafayette, Nicollet County, Minnesota
Lafayette is a city of 492 people in Nicollet County. 84% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 16% are rented. Unemployment in Nicollet County was 3.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Lafayette is a very small city in Nicollet County, with a quiet, close-knit scale. Nearly all homes are lived in by their owners, and fewer residents live below the poverty line than you might expect for a place of this size. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers are warm, with July the warmest; precipitation arrives as both rain and melted snow through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in other services and in the building trades. Few people work from home, and the typical commute is a moderate one. Across Nicollet County, the largest workplaces include Gustavus Adolphus College and the Minnesota Department of Human Services, and unemployment in the county has risen a little over the past year.
Things to do. For a short outing, the Brown County Museum and the Wanda Gág House, both museums, are a short drive away. Flandrau State Park, a protected area, and Fort Ridgely, a historic fort, are a longer drive away, and Swan Lake offers some time by the water.
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- 176households
- 22%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Nicollet County had 14,599 jobs in 2025, 0.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 23° and lows near 4°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 60°. About 33 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the New Ulm 3SE weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Nicollet County
- MN Department of Human ServicesMental health facilities, residential1,049
- Gustavus Adolphus CollegeUniversity or college658
- MSOP St. PeterMental health facilities, residential339
- The Occasions Group304
- St. Peter Public School DistrictSchool district299FTE
- South Central CollegeTwo-year college292
- Taylor Print and Visual Impressions - N Man257
- Conagra BrandsPopcorn candy covered popped manufacturing214
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 67 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,746 people in all across the county; Lafayette has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- Strong windVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lafayette’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 Nicollet County and the Mankato, MN metro.
Lafayette home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lafayette$255,258
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Lafayette address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lafayette — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.