Pillager, Minnesota.
Typical home $332,393 (+2.9% in a year). Brainerd, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,046 (+150%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,498 +3%
- $322,895$332,393 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $84,685 +34%
- $247,708$332,393 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.
- Pillager$1,745
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 12 years.
Typical home values in Pillager, MN rose 2.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Pillager, Cass County, Minnesota
Pillager is a city of 507 people in Cass County. Half its households earn more than $67,679 a year and half less, against $68,874 across Cass County; 10% of its people live below the poverty line. 64% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 36% are rented. Unemployment in Cass County was 5.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Pillager is a very small city, with residents who are somewhat older than the typical American. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and household incomes run a little below the county's. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and highs staying well below freezing, while July brings warm days; a fair amount of rain and melted snow falls over the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in the building trades and in government. Across Cass County, some of the largest workplaces are Trident Seafoods, Cass County itself and Madden's On Gull Lake. A typical commute is a fairly long one, and few people work from home.
Things to do. The area is built around water and woods. The Crow Wing River and Sylvan Lake are each a short drive away, as is Crow Wing State Park, an archaeological site with a long history. Farther afield, Brainerd International Raceway is a longer drive for those who like a race track.
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- 239households
- 23%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
- 5%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cass County had 10,595 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 18° and lows near -1°; warmest in July, with highs near 79° and lows near 61°. About 27 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Gull Lake Dam weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Cass County
- Trident SeafoodsSeafood and seafood products manufacturing340
- Cass CountyExecutive and legislative office combinations294
- Madden's On Gull LakeAutomobile courts, lodging278
- Cass Lake-bena Public SchoolsSchool district241FTE
- Cass Lake Indian HospitalCritical access hospital238FTE
- ElemK-12 education164
- DW Jones ManagementOther154
- Indian Health ServiceFederal government · Department of Health and Human Services154
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 25 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 2,396 people in all across the county; Pillager has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- LightningRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Pillager’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Cass County and the Brainerd, MN metro.
Pillager home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Pillager$332,393
- 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.
- Pillager12
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Pillager5
Zip codes with a Pillager address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Pillager — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.