Merna, Nebraska.
Typical home $169,771 (+5.9% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$329 (+58%) since Feb 2022.
- 1 year
- Up $9,386 +6%
- $160,385$169,771 since Sep 2025
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.
- Merna$891
- Nebraska$1,461
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Merna, NE rose 5.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Merna, Custer County, Nebraska
Merna is a village of 343 people in Custer County. Unemployment in Custer County was 2.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then manufacturing.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Merna is a very small village in Custer County, Nebraska, where people tend to know one another and the pace is quiet. Incomes in the county sit a little below the middle of the country, and fewer adults here hold a four-year degree than in most places. Winters are cold, with plenty of snow, and summers turn properly warm.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, farming and retail also giving people a living. Across Custer County, some of the larger workplaces are Becton Dickinson, which makes hypodermic needles and syringes, Broken Bow Public Schools, and Jennie M. Melham Memorial Med Center, a critical access hospital. Very few people here work from home, and joblessness in the county is low and has held steady from a year ago.
Things to do. No nearby places are listed for Merna, so there is little to point to beyond the village itself. Cold, snowy winters and warm summers shape the year, and the quiet surroundings suit anyone who likes open country and a slower rhythm.
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- 156households
- 14%of adults have a degree
- 20%below the poverty line
- 4%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Custer County had 4,544 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 12°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 60°. About 30 inches of snow and 23 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Broken Bow West weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Custer County
- USA NE - Broken Bow Becton DickinsonHypodermic needles and syringes manufacturing594
- Broken BOW Public SchoolsSchool district116FTE
- Adams Land and CattleBeef cattle feedlots113
- Jennie M. Melham Memorial MED CenterCritical access hospital90FTE
- the grocery kartGrocery stores75
- Myers ConstructionUtility line, construction74
- Adams Land and CattleBeef cattle feedlots55
- Callaway District HospitalCritical access hospital50FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 7 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,054 people in all across the county; Merna has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Ice stormsRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Merna’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 Custer County.
Merna home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Merna$169,771
- Nebraska$278,299
- 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 Merna address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Merna — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.