Rochester, Michigan.
Typical home $495,401 (+3.9% in a year), asking rent $1,942 (+2.0%). Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,340 (+106%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $18,557 +4%
- $476,844$495,401 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $100,231 +25%
- $395,170$495,401 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.
- Rochester$2,600
- Michigan$1,384
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Rochester, MI rose 3.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Rochester, MI rose 2.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Rochester runs $1,714/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $3,656 a month against $1,942 rent: a $2,600 mortgage payment, plus $525 property tax and $530 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Rochester
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$3,656
- Renting$1,942
- Mortgage only$2,600
Property tax · $525/mo 1.27% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Oakland County, MI
Insurance & upkeep · $530/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 Rochester, Oakland County, Michigan
Rochester is a city of 13,035 people in Oakland County. Half its households earn more than $111,750 a year and half less, against $97,760 across Oakland County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 67% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 33% are rented. Unemployment in Oakland County was 4.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.5% 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. Rochester is a city in Oakland County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and incomes run above the county's. Poverty is uncommon, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. The population skews a little older than the typical American community, and winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month and July the warmest.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, professional and business services, and banks, insurance and property also well represented. Some of the largest workplaces in Rochester are the Rochester Community School District, Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital and Pfizer's Rochester site. Commutes are of moderate length, and a good many people work from home. Unemployment across Oakland County is higher than a year ago, and the county has slightly fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. The Pontiac Silverdome, a stadium, is a short drive away, as is the River Rouge. A longer drive takes you to Lake Saint Clair, a lake, and to the Detroit Institute of Arts, a museum.
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- 5,610households
- 70%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 27%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Oakland County had 720,266 jobs in 2025, 0.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 17°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 63°. About 36 inches of snow and 34 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Pontiac Wwtp weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rochester
- Rochester Community School DistrictSchool district2,151FTE
- Ascension Providence Rochester HospiGeneral hospital875FTE
- Endo USAAdrenal medicinal preparations manufacturing522
- Pfizer, RochesterPenicillin preparations manufacturing139
- Royal Park HotelHotel management services138
- Compass Group130
- City of RochesterCity and town managers' offices129
- Compass Group123
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 13 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,025 people in all. 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
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Rochester’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 Oakland County and the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI metro.
Rochester home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Rochester$495,401
- Michigan$263,760
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Rochester listings — 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.
- Rochester29.81%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Rochester49
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Rochester16
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Rochester$478,102
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Rochester address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Rochester — 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.