Plato, Minnesota.
Typical home $364,713 (+5.6% in a year). Hutchinson, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,106 (+137%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $19,244 +6%
- $345,469$364,713 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $93,741 +35%
- $270,971$364,713 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.
- Plato$1,914
- 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 Plato, MN rose 5.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Plato, McLeod County, Minnesota
Plato is a city of 329 people in McLeod County. Half its households earn more than $91,250 a year and half less, against $80,084 across McLeod County; 0% of its people live below the poverty line. 97% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 3% are rented. Unemployment in McLeod County was 5.0% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in McLeod County work in manufacturing, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Plato is a very small city in McLeod County, Minnesota, where almost every home is lived in by its owner and hardly anyone lives below the poverty line. Household incomes run above the county's, and the typical resident is middle-aged. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month and highs staying well below freezing, while July brings warm summer days.
Work. Residents work mainly in manufacturing, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in the building trades. Across McLeod County, some of the largest workplaces are 3M Company, the Hutchinson Public School District and Hutchinson Health Care. A fair number of people work from home, and the typical commute is a long one by small-town standards.
Things to do. Several lakes sit a short drive away, including Tiger Lake and Eagle Lake, and Buffalo Creek is a short drive away as well for anyone who prefers a river. A longer drive leads to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, a botanical garden, and to the biggest ball of twine, a roadside tourist attraction.
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- 18%of adults have a degree
- 0%below the poverty line
- 29 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What people in McLeod County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McLeod County had 15,822 jobs in 2025, 0.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 21° and lows near 3°; warmest in July, with highs near 81° and lows near 61°. About 50 inches of snow and 32 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Brownton Wwtp weather station, 15 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in McLeod County
- 3M Company1,235
- HealthPartners, Inc.General medical and surgical hospitals486
- Hutchinson Public School DistrictSchool district410FTE
- Hutchinson Health CareGeneral hospital408FTE
- Seneca FoodsVegetable canning404
- Glencoe Regional Health ServicesCritical access hospital345FTE
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters337
- Presbyterian Homes & Services231
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 84 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 8,404 people in all across the county; Plato has one 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively 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 Plato’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 McLeod County and the Hutchinson, MN metro.
Plato home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Plato$364,713
- 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.
Zip codes with a Plato address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Plato — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.