Nerstrand, Minnesota.
Typical home $417,583 (+4.5% in a year). Faribault-Northfield, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,229 (+128%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $17,881 +4%
- $399,702$417,583 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $98,899 +31%
- $318,684$417,583 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.
- Nerstrand$2,192
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Nerstrand, MN rose 4.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Nerstrand, Rice County, Minnesota
Nerstrand is a city of 273 people in Rice County. 93% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 7% are rented. Unemployment in Rice County was 4.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.0% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Rice County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Nerstrand is a very small city in Rice County, Minnesota, with far fewer people than most towns and almost all of its homes lived in by their owners. A typical home here is worth more than one might expect for a place this size. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are pleasantly warm, July being the warmest, and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in manufacturing, shops and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Few work from home, and few adults hold a four-year degree. Across Rice County, some of the largest workplaces are Jennie-O Turkey Store, Carleton College and St Olaf College, and unemployment in the county has risen a little over the past year.
Things to do. Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, a protected area, sits in or beside town, along with the Little Cannon River. A short drive away is Crystal Lake, a lake for time on the water. For a longer outing, Rice Lake State Park is another protected area, and the Paradise Center for the Arts is a theatre, both a longer drive away.
Report a mistake
- 88households
- 13%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 4%work from home
What people in Rice County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rice County had 26,450 jobs in 2025, 1.0% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 23° and lows near 5°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 61°. About 43 inches of snow and 35 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Faribault weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rice County
- Jennie-O Turkey StoreTurkeys, processing, fresh, frozen, canned, or cooked911
- Carleton CollegeUniversity or college897
- St Olaf CollegeUniversity or college836
- PCBBreakfast cereal manufacturing640
- MN Department of CorrectionsCorrectional institutions599
- Daikin Applied - Faribault SouthHeating and air conditioning combination units manufacturing555
- Faribault Public School DistrictSchool district531FTE
- Far - Aldi INC Minnesota514
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 86 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,309 people in all across the county; Nerstrand has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- 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 Nerstrand’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 Rice County and the Faribault-Northfield, MN metro.
Nerstrand home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Nerstrand$417,583
- Minnesota$348,778
- 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.
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 Nerstrand address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Nerstrand — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.