Max, North Dakota.
Typical home $178,911 (-0.4% in a year). Minot, ND metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$422 (+81%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $647 -0%
- $179,558$178,911 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $23,082 +15%
- $155,830$178,911 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.
- Max$939
- North Dakota$1,526
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 25 years.
Typical home values in Max, ND fell 0.4% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Max, Ward County, North Dakota
Max is a city of 331 people in Ward County. Half its households earn more than $80,208 a year and half less, against $78,238 across Ward County; 1% of its people live below the poverty line. 89% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 11% are rented. Unemployment in Ward County was 2.0% in August 2026, and the county had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Ward County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Max is a very small city on the North Dakota plains, where nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Incomes run a little above the county's, and hardly anyone lives below the poverty line. Typical home values are modest, and winters are long and cold, with January highs staying well below freezing and a good deal of snow through the season, while July brings warm days.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in shops, in farming, forestry and mining, and in the building trades. Across Ward County, the largest workplaces include Trinity Hospitals/St. Joes, Minot 1 Schools and Minot State University. The typical commute is long, and some people work from home. Unemployment across the county is low and a little lower than a year ago, though the county has slightly fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. Lake Sakakawea, a large reservoir, is a longer drive away, as is Fort Stevenson State Park, a protected area. Also a longer drive away, Roosevelt Park Zoo and the Scandinavian Heritage Park museum offer indoor and outdoor outings. Together they give residents a mix of water, parkland and local culture within reach of town.
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- 1%below the poverty line
- 32 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What people in Ward County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Ward County had 31,171 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 18° and lows near 0°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 58°. About 49 inches of snow and 19 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Max weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Ward County
- Trinity Hospitals/st JoesGeneral hospital2,003FTE
- Trinity Health1,387
- Minot 1 SchoolsSchool district1,271FTE
- Minot State UniversityUniversity or college512
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters448
- Minot Vocational Adjustment WorkshopSocial service advocacy organizations386
- Hess Corporation - MinotPetroleum, crude, production250
- TargetDiscount department stores233
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 56 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,852 people in all across the county; Max has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- Cold wavesVery high
- HailVery high
- Ice stormsVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Max’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Ward County and the Minot, ND metro.
Max home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Max$178,911
- North Dakota$290,657
- 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 Max address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Max — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.