Madison, Wisconsin.
Typical home $424,543 (+2.5% in a year), asking rent $1,837 (+1.8%). Madison, WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,200 (+117%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,441 +3%
- $414,102$424,543 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $92,029 +28%
- $332,514$424,543 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.
- Madison$2,228
- Wisconsin$1,770
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Madison, WI rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Madison, WI rose 1.8% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Madison runs $1,422/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $3,258 a month against $1,837 rent: a $2,228 mortgage payment, plus $575 property tax and $455 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Madison
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$3,258
- Renting$1,837
- Mortgage only$2,228
Property tax · $575/mo 1.63% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Dane County, WI
Insurance & upkeep · $455/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Madison, Dane County, Wisconsin
Madison is a city of 269,840 people in Dane County. Half its households earn more than $78,050 a year and half less, against $89,975 across Dane County; 16% of its people live below the poverty line. 46% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 54% are rented. Unemployment in Madison was 2.9% in August 2026, and Dane County had 0.6% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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. Madison is a city and the home of a large state university, and that shows in who lives there: residents are younger than in most places, and far more adults hold a four-year degree than across the country. Incomes run below the county's, and renters outnumber owners, so more households here rent than own. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are pleasantly warm, and precipitation is spread through the year as both rain and melted snow.
Work. Much of the work in town is in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, shops, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. The largest workplaces include the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of WI Hospitals & Clinics and the Madison Metropolitan School District. Unemployment is low and has edged up only slightly over the past year, and the commute is short, with a fair number of people working from home.
Things to do. Water is a big part of life here: Lake Mendota lies in or beside town, and Lake Monona is a short drive away. For a quieter outing, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum, a botanical garden, is also a short drive away. In town, the Overture Center for the Arts and the Henry Vilas Zoo are both close at hand.
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- 128,261households
- 60%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 19 mintypical commute
- 20%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Dane County had 361,286 jobs in 2025, 0.6% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 28° and lows near 11°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Uw Arboretum - Madison weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Madison
- University of Wisconsin-MadisonUniversity or college20,893
- University of WI Hospitals & ClinicsGeneral hospital9,994FTE
- Madison Metropolitan School DistrictSchool district4,048FTE
- Meriter HospitalGeneral hospital2,351FTE
- Veterans Health AdministrationFederal government · Department of Veterans Affairs2,337
- Madison Area Technical CollegeUniversity or college1,902
- St. Marys HospitalGeneral hospital1,575FTE
- KleenMarkJanitorial services, aircraft1,183
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 270 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 36,549 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Dane County, 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 Dane County and the Madison, WI metro.
Madison home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Madison$424,543
- Wisconsin$337,196
- 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 3 Madison listings, and the typical home goes pending in 13 days — 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.
- Madison31.25%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Madison13
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Madison561
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Madison241
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Madison$415,822
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Madison101.20%
Zip codes with a Madison address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Madison — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Madison
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53711 | Madison | 51,279 | $1,713 | $505,853 |
| 53704 | Madison | 46,730 | $1,546 | $373,737 |
| 53703 | Madison | 37,659 | $1,953 | $450,167 |
| 53719 | Madison | 34,115 | $1,608 | $428,179 |
| 53705 | Madison | 25,017 | $1,829 | $553,806 |
| 53713 | Madison | 24,351 | $1,403 | $359,178 |
| 53718 | Madison | 18,989 | $1,627 | $434,496 |
| 53716 | Madison | 18,596 | $1,820 | $414,403 |
| 53714 | Madison | 16,169 | $1,493 | $378,306 |
| 53715 | Madison | 15,974 | $2,280 | $502,364 |
| 53717 | Madison | 13,052 | — | $511,481 |
| 53726 | Madison | 5,043 | $2,001 | $789,830 |