South Fork, Colorado.
Typical home $447,500 (+2.3% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,410 (+150%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $10,272 +2%
- $437,227$447,500 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $118,900 +36%
- $328,599$447,500 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.
- South Fork$2,349
- Colorado$2,777
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in South Fork, CO rose 2.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in South Fork, Rio Grande County, Colorado
South Fork is a town of 510 people in Rio Grande County. Unemployment in Rio Grande County was 5.0% in August 2026, and the county had 1.8% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Rio Grande County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. South Fork is a very small town in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado, set beside the South Fork of the Rio Grande. Winters here are cold and snowy, with January the coldest month, while summers are mild and warm in July. Rain and melted snow add up to little over the year, so the climate is dry for much of the country. Home values in the town run high for a place of its size.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in the building trades, and in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Rio Grande County, some of the largest workplaces are Monte Vista School District No. C, RIO Grande Hospital and Upper Rio Grande School District C. The county has fewer jobs than it did a year earlier, and unemployment there is higher than it was a year ago.
Things to do. The South Fork Rio Grande runs in or beside town, and the South San Juan Wilderness, a protected area, lies close by as well. A longer drive away are the Wolf Creek ski area and Treasure Falls, a waterfall. The wider Rio Grande National Forest, also a longer drive away, offers more protected land to explore.
Report a mistake
- 11%below the poverty line
What people in Rio Grande County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Rio Grande County had 4,402 jobs in 2025, 1.8% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 35° and lows near 7°; warmest in July, with highs near 80° and lows near 50°. About 39 inches of snow and 10 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Del Norte 3ENE weather station, 18 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Rio Grande County
- Monte Vista School District No. C-8School district174FTE
- RIO Grande HospitalCritical access hospital136FTE
- Upper Rio Grande School District C-7School district71FTE
- Monte Vista CooperativeFarm supply stores58
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture54
- Sargent School District No. Re-33JSchool district51FTE
- Rock Creek Rehabilitation and HealthcareSkilled nursing facilities49
- SafewaySupermarkets and other grocery stores44
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 6 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 425 people in all across the county; South Fork has none of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- LightningVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- LandslidesRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in South Fork’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 Rio Grande County.
South Fork home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- South Fork$447,500
- Colorado$529,013
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 South Fork 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.
- South Fork22.63%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- South Fork49
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- South Fork6
Zip codes with a South Fork address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls South Fork — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.