Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.
Typical home $178,174 (+8.4% in a year). New Ulm, MN metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$492 (+111%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $13,861 +8%
- $164,314$178,174 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $41,548 +30%
- $136,626$178,174 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.
- Sleepy Eye$935
- Minnesota$1,831
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Sleepy Eye, MN rose 8.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Sleepy Eye, Brown County, Minnesota
Sleepy Eye is a city of 3,452 people in Brown County. Half its households earn more than $66,911 a year and half less, against $69,378 across Brown County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. 78% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 22% are rented. Unemployment in Brown County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% more 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Sleepy Eye is a small city in Brown County, Minnesota, where most homes are lived in by their owners and the typical home value sits modestly. Household incomes run a little below the county's, and the population is somewhat older than younger. Winters are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while July brings warm summer days and the year is fairly wet.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with manufacturing, the building trades, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment also employing a good number. Among the largest workplaces in Sleepy Eye are the public school district, the municipal hospital and the City of Sleepy Eye itself. Commutes are short, and few people work from home.
Things to do. Sleepy Eye Lake is in or beside town, and Bachelor Lake is a short drive away, both good for time by the water. For a longer outing, Flandrau State Park is a protected area a longer drive away, and Fort Ridgely is a historic fort, also a longer drive away.
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- 1,481households
- 19%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 15 mintypical commute
- 6%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Brown County had 13,328 jobs in 2025, 0.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 24° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 82° and lows near 62°. About 38 inches of snow and 31 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the New Ulm Southeast weather station, 12 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sleepy Eye
- Sleepy EYE Public School DistrictSchool district89FTE
- Sleepy EYE Municipal HospitalCritical access hospital86FTE
- City of Sleepy EyeDistribution of electric power70
- Monarch Healthcare ManagementSkilled nursing facilities42
- Mark Thomas CoPrint shops, lithographic32
- BalchemMilk, concentrated, condensed, dried, evaporated, and powdered, manufacturing31
- Kibble Equipment - Sleepy EyeAgricultural machinery and equipment merchant wholesalers21
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 5 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 196 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
- Cold wavesVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Strong windVery high
- TornadoesRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Sleepy Eye’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively 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 Brown County and the New Ulm, MN metro.
Sleepy Eye home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Sleepy Eye$178,174
- Minnesota$348,778
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Sleepy Eye listings — the market is roughly in balance.
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.
- Sleepy Eye30.52%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Sleepy Eye19
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Sleepy Eye6
Zip codes with a Sleepy Eye address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Sleepy Eye — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.