Nelson, Nebraska.
Typical home $69,780 (-4.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$139 (+61%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $3,421 -5%
- $73,201$69,780 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $8,559 -11%
- $78,338$69,780 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.
- Nelson$366
- Nebraska$1,461
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Nelson, NE fell 4.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Nelson, Nuckolls County, Nebraska
Nelson is a city of 456 people in Nuckolls County. 85% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 15% are rented. Unemployment in Nuckolls County was 2.0% in August 2026, and the county had 4.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Nuckolls County work in schools and health care, then farming.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Nelson is a small city in Nuckolls County, Nebraska, and an older one: residents are considerably older than in most of the country, and nearly everyone lives in a home they own. Homes here cost far less than the national typical, and fewer adults hold a four-year degree than across the country as a whole. Winters are cold, with January highs near freezing and lows well below it, while July brings hot days; snow falls through the winter and the year brings a moderate amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with farming, shops, and transport and warehouse jobs also employing people. Across Nuckolls County, the largest workplaces include Brodstone Memorial Hospital, Superior Public Schools and GSS Superior, a nursing home. Unemployment across the county is low and about where it stood a year ago, and the county has more jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. The nearest well-known places are all a longer drive away. The Lawrence Opera House is a theatre, and Lovewell Reservoir is a lake for time on the water. The Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site is an archaeological site with a museum, a good stop for anyone curious about the area's earlier history.
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- 304households
- 23%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
What people in Nuckolls County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Nuckolls County had 1,636 jobs in 2025, 4.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 37° and lows near 14°; warmest in July, with highs near 89° and lows near 65°. About 21 inches of snow and 28 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Superior weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Nuckolls County
- Brodstone Memorial HospitalCritical access hospital184FTE
- Superior Public SchoolsSchool district97FTE
- GSS SuperiorNursing homes64
- Mid Nebraska Individual ServicesWorkshops for persons with disabilities25
- Mid Nebraska Individual Services ResidentialIntellectual and developmental disability homes25
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 3 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 114 people in all across the county; Nelson has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) 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
- HailVery high
- Strong windVery high
- LightningVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Ice stormsVery high
- TornadoesVery high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Nelson’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 Nuckolls County.
Nelson home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Nelson$69,780
- 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 Nelson address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Nelson — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.