Stanford, Illinois.
Typical home $191,333 (+5.0% in a year). Bloomington, IL metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$540 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,146 +5%
- $182,187$191,333 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $54,046 +39%
- $137,287$191,333 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.
- Stanford$1,004
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 10 years.
Typical home values in Stanford, IL rose 5.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Stanford, McLean County, Illinois
Stanford is a village of 600 people in McLean County. 90% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 10% are rented. Unemployment in McLean County was 3.4% in August 2026, and the county had 2.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in McLean County work in schools and health care, then finance and property.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Stanford is a small village in the Illinois farm country of McLean County, and nearly everyone who lives there owns their home. Fewer adults hold a four-year degree than is typical, and more households live below the poverty line than you might expect in a town this settled. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month and freezing nights, and summers turn warm by July; the year brings a fair amount of rain and melted snow.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with banks, insurance and property, shops, and professional and business services also employing many. Across McLean County, the largest workplaces include Illinois State University, the Rivian assembly plant in Normal and McLean County USD 5. The typical commute is a modest one, a small number work from home, and the county has seen fewer jobs than the year before even as unemployment there has eased.
Things to do. Spider Hill, an amusement park, is a short drive away. Farther afield, the Peoria Zoo and Fell Arboretum, a botanical garden, make good day trips, and the Mackinaw River is a longer drive for time by the water.
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- 209households
- 12%of adults have a degree
- 15%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What people in McLean County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. McLean County had 87,006 jobs in 2025, 2.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 31° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Bloomington 5W weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in McLean County
- Rivian Motorway (Normal, Illinois)Assembly plants, light trucks on chassis of own manufacture5,309
- Illinois State UniversityUniversity or college3,570
- McLean County USD 5School district1,988FTE
- City of BloomingtonParks, nature1,113
- Carle Bromenn Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,030FTE
- St. Joseph Medical CenterGeneral hospital843FTE
- FerreroChocolate bars made from cocoa beans678
- Bloomington SD 87School district565FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 144 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 28,686 people in all across the county; Stanford has none of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), school districts 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
- DroughtRelatively high
- Cold wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Strong windRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- TornadoesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Stanford’s census tracts, 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 McLean County and the Bloomington, IL metro.
Stanford home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Stanford$191,333
- Illinois$295,943
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Stanford5
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Zip codes with a Stanford address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Stanford — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.