Medford, Minnesota.
Typical home $305,796 (+2.5% in a year). Owatonna, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$884 (+123%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,449 +2%
- $298,347$305,796 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $61,235 +25%
- $244,561$305,796 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.
- Medford$1,605
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Medford, MN rose 2.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Medford, Steele County, Minnesota
Medford is a city of 1,315 people in Steele County. Half its households earn more than $108,250 a year and half less, against $84,196 across Steele County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 80% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 20% are rented. Unemployment in Steele County was 5.6% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% more 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Medford is a small city in Steele County, home to a small population, most of whom own the homes they live in. Household incomes run well above the county's, and fewer residents live below the poverty line than you might expect for a town this size. Winters are cold and snowy, with a January that stays well below freezing, while July brings warm days, and the year is fairly wet with rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mainly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in banks, insurance and property. Across Steele County, some of the largest workplaces are Federated Mutual Insurance, Viracon and the Owatonna Public School District. A typical commute is a moderate one, and only a small share of people work from home.
Things to do. Crane Creek runs in or beside town, and the Straight River is a short drive away for time along the water. Also a short drive off is the Paradise Center for the Arts, a theatre. Rice Lake State Park, a protected area, is a longer drive for a day outdoors.
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- 467households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Steele County had 19,168 jobs in 2025, 1.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 22° and lows near 5°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 62°. About 44 inches of snow and 35 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Owatonna weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Steele County
- Federated Mutual InsuranceInsurance carriers, property and casualty, direct1,846
- ViraconFlat glass manufacturing922
- Federated Mutual InsuranceInsurance carriers, property and casualty, direct757
- Owatonna Public School DistrictSchool district695FTE
- Wenger Corp - OWAInstitutional furniture manufacturing482
- Bosch Automotive Service SolutionsSaw blades, all types, manufacturing460
- AmesburyTruthAppliance hardware, metal, manufacturing354
- Steele CountyGeneral services departments, government251
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 76 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 10,665 people in all across the county; Medford has none of its own. School districts come 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
- TornadoesVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Medford’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 Steele County and the Owatonna, MN metro.
Medford home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Medford$305,796
- Minnesota$348,778
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
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 Medford address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Medford — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.