Northfield, Minnesota.
Typical home $392,602 (+1.9% in a year), asking rent $1,739 . Faribault-Northfield, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,041 (+102%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,178 +2%
- $385,424$392,602 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $58,252 +17%
- $334,350$392,602 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.
- Northfield$2,061
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 22 years.
Typical home values in Northfield, MN rose 1.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Owning the typical home in Northfield runs $1,060/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $2,799 a month against $1,739 rent: a $2,061 mortgage payment, plus $318 property tax and $420 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Northfield
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,799
- Renting$1,739
- Mortgage only$2,061
Property tax · $318/mo 0.97% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Rice County, MN
Insurance & upkeep · $420/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Northfield, Rice County, Minnesota
Northfield is a city of 20,790 people in Rice County. Half its households earn more than $84,895 a year and half less, against $83,181 across Rice County; 9% of its people live below the poverty line. 69% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 31% 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 residents work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
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. Northfield is a small city in Rice County with a young population for its size, a result of the college life in town. Household incomes sit a little above the county's, and most homes are lived in by their owners. A large share of adults hold a four-year degree, and winters are cold and snowy, with summers that turn warm.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in restaurants and hotels, manufacturing and shops. Carleton College, Northfield City Hospital and Northfield Public School District are among the largest workplaces in town. The typical commute is short, and a good number of people work from home.
Things to do. The Carleton College Cowling Arboretum and the Jo Ryo En Japanese Garden are both in or beside town, for walks among cultivated plantings. Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, a protected area, and Union Lake are each a short drive away.
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- 6,380households
- 53%of adults have a degree
- 9%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 16%work from home
What residents 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, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Northfield
- Carleton CollegeUniversity or college897
- PCBBreakfast cereal manufacturing640
- Northfield City HospitalGeneral hospital587FTE
- Northfield Public School DistrictSchool district513FTE
- Sheldahl Flexible TechnologiesPrinted circuit assemblies manufacturing231
- TargetDiscount department stores202
- City of NorthfieldGeneral public administration163
- Cardinal CG0134
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 31 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 5,236 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Northfield’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 Rice County and the Faribault-Northfield, MN metro.
Northfield home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Northfield$392,602
- 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.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Northfield listings, and the typical home goes pending in 33 days — the market is cooling.
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
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Northfield25.22%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Northfield33
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Northfield92
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Northfield29
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Northfield$333,790
- United States$371,407
Zip codes with a Northfield address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Northfield — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.