Saco, Montana.
Typical home $135,791 (+7.2% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$430 (+152%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,082 +7%
- $126,709$135,791 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $25,219 +23%
- $110,572$135,791 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.
- Saco$713
- Montana$2,453
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Saco, MT rose 7.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Saco, Phillips County, Montana
Saco is a town of 159 people in Phillips County. Half its households earn more than $48,500 a year and half less, against $53,417 across Phillips County. Unemployment in Phillips County was 2.6% in August 2026, and the county had 5.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Phillips County work in farming, 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Saco is a very small town in Phillips County, the kind of place where residents know one another. Household incomes here run below the county's, and homes are modest in price. Winters are long and cold, with January the coldest month and nights well below freezing, while July brings warm days. The year is dry, with little rain or melted snow overall.
Work. Residents work mostly in farming, forestry and mining, in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, and in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Phillips County, the largest workplaces include Malta K-12 Schools, Phillips County Hospital and Albertsons. Unemployment across the county is lower than it was a year earlier, and the county has more jobs than the year before.
Things to do. Nelson Reservoir is a reservoir a short drive away. Farther out, a longer drive brings you to Bowdoin National Wildlife Refuge and Hewitt Lake National Wildlife Refuge, both protected areas. The Great Plains Dinosaur Museum and Field Station is also a longer drive away, and is a museum well suited to a day trip.
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What people in Phillips County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Phillips County had 1,228 jobs in 2025, 5.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 26° and lows near 2°; warmest in July, with highs near 83° and lows near 55°. About 13 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Saco Nnw weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Phillips County
- Malta K-12 SchoolsSchool district82FTE
- Phillips County HospitalCritical access hospital51FTE
- AlbertsonsSupermarkets and other grocery stores50
- Dodson K-12 SchoolsSchool district28FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 2 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 108 people in all across the county; Saco has none 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- LightningVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- HailRelatively high
- Strong windRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Saco’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very high. 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 Phillips County.
Saco home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Saco$135,791
- Montana$467,275
- 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 Saco address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Saco — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.