Porter, Minnesota.
Typical home $257,916 (+9.1% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$762 (+129%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Up $21,559 +9%
- $236,357$257,916 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $63,305 +33%
- $194,611$257,916 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.
- Porter$1,354
- 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 Porter, MN rose 9.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Porter, Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota
Porter is a city of 166 people in Yellow Medicine County. 71% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 29% are rented. Unemployment in Yellow Medicine County was 5.9% in August 2026, and the county had 0.3% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Porter is a very small city in Yellow Medicine County, in the farm country of western Minnesota. Most homes are lived in by their owners, and a typical home is valued well below what many buyers elsewhere would expect to pay. Winters are cold, with January highs well below freezing and a good deal of snow through the season, while summers turn warm in July.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, farming and wholesale also employing people. Across Yellow Medicine County, some of the largest workplaces are Minnesota West Community and Technical College, Yellow Medicine East Schools and Avera Granite Falls. Unemployment across the county has risen over the past year, and the number of jobs has slipped slightly.
Things to do. Canby Creek is a river a short drive away. Camden State Park, a protected area, and Fish Lake are both a longer drive away, as is the Yellow Medicine River. The country around Porter is a place for time by the water and out of doors.
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- 30%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 9%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Yellow Medicine County had 3,610 jobs in 2025, 0.3% fewer 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 83° and lows near 62°. About 48 inches of snow and 28 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Canby weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Yellow Medicine County
- Minnesota West Community and Technical CollegeTwo-year college254
- Yellow Medicine East SchoolsSchool district112FTE
- Avera Granite FallsCritical access hospital108FTE
- Sanford Hospital CanbyCritical access hospital91FTE
- Canby Public School DistrictSchool district81FTE
- Clarkfield Care CenterNursing homes62
- City of Granite FallsCity and town managers' offices52
- UPSCouriers and express delivery services48
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 19 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,134 people in all across the county; Porter has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- Heat wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Strong windRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Porter’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 Yellow Medicine County.
Porter home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Porter$257,916
- 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 Porter address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Porter — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.