Porter, Wisconsin.
Typical home $492,381 (+7.4% in a year). Janesville-Beloit, WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,453 (+128%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $34,086 +7%
- $458,295$492,381 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $118,162 +32%
- $374,218$492,381 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$2,584
- Wisconsin$1,770
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Porter, WI rose 7.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Porter, Rock County, Wisconsin
Porter is a town of 969 people in Rock County. 89% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 11% are rented. Unemployment in Rock County was 3.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then construction.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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 small, rural town in Rock County, Wisconsin, where nearly everyone owns the home they live in. Incomes in town sit below the county's, and homes here cost more than you might expect for a place this size. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers turn warm in July and the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in the building trades, in farming and forestry, or in manufacturing. Across Rock County, the largest workplaces include Mercy Health System, the Janesville School District and Beloit Memorial Hospital. Commutes are fairly long, and only a small number of people work from home.
Things to do. Gibbs Lake is a lake in or beside town. A short drive away are the Yahara River and the Stoughton Opera House, a theatre. Lake Kegonsa State Park, a protected area, is a longer drive away.
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- 382households
- 39%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rock County had 69,744 jobs in 2025, 0.2% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 27° and lows near 10°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 61°. About 36 inches of snow and 38 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Stoughton weather station, 7 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rock County
- Mercy Health SystemGeneral hospital2,960FTE
- Janesville School DistrictSchool district1,433FTE
- Beloit Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,179FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage1,134
- JP Cullen & SonsInstitutional building construction general contractors817
- Beloit School DistrictSchool district802FTE
- LeMansGeneral warehousing and storage728
- W.W. GraingerIndustrial supplies merchant wholesalers691
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 210 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 29,735 people in all across the county; Porter has none of its own. Hospitals come 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
- HailRelatively high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
- LightningRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms across Rock County, 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 Rock County and the Janesville-Beloit, WI metro.
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$492,381
- Wisconsin$337,196
- 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.
Zillow publishes no zip-level series with this city on the address.