Home prices in this remote Minnesota county can rival the Twin Cities

The Twin Cities’ median home price broke $400,000 for the first time this summer, setting a new bar for the premium homebuyers must pay in the state’s most populated areas.

And while Minnesota’s rural buyers mostly enjoy lower prices, one notable exception has come into view: Cook County, a rugged outpost along the Canadian border.

Despite being one of the state’s most sparsely populated counties, it was also one of the most expensive this summer.

Popular with buyers drawn to miles of Lake Superior shoreline and vast wilderness dotted with inland lakes, the median sale price in Cook County during June was $410,000, putting it on par with much more expensive metros, according to an analysis by Minnesota Realtors.

“There’s kind of a frenzy out there, so prices are going up,” said Patti Jo Fitzpatrick, president of the group and longtime sales agent.

The median price for the rest of the state rose to a record $370,000, according to midyear home sales data.

Cook County may be a rural outlier, but virtually every county popular with second-home buyers also saw prices that rival those in some of the most popular Twin Cities suburbs, she said.

The median price in Crow Wing County during June was $350,000.

“A lot of people are still doing second and third homes and buying stuff and increasing the value of those areas,” she said.

Historically, areas outside major metros are significantly less expensive and houses take longer to sell than in bigger metros where there are better-paying jobs, more amenities and coveted school districts.

In some parts of the state, however, the pandemic dramatically upended those trends as remote work enabled buyers to live farther from their jobs, boosting prices in areas once dominated by weekenders.

Fitzpatrick says the shift is more than temporary. Her family’s lake used to be especially calm on weekdays, she said, while people were at school and work in the metro.

In June 2020, houses in the Twin Cities metro sold on average in 42 days for a median sale price of $305,000. A year later, midpandemic, time-on-market dropped by half while the median sale price rose nearly 15%, according to data from the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors.

In a sign buying patterns had shifted, the average market time made a similar drop across the state but the median sale price increased nearly 20%.

Those trends largely continue. As of last month, the median sale price rose faster and pending sales were higher statewide than in the Twin Cities metro.

Statewide, houses sold on average in 35 days — four days faster than in the Twin Cities metro.

The gap in metro vs. statewide sale prices also narrowed, from 12.5% in 2020 to only 8.3% in 2025.

Linda Garrity, broker and owner at Songbird Realty in Grand Marais, the county seat and biggest town in Cook County, said buyers are not as aggressive as they were in “the COVID years,” but it remains a very competitive market.

“With so few properties available, especially those that would be considered remotely affordable,” she said, “our North Shore micro-market does still create multiple offer scenarios.”

Case in point: Last month, a two-bedroom, year-round cottage with 5 acres and 300 feet of Lake Superior shoreline in Lutsen was listed for $995,000. Within a couple of weeks of hitting the market, a buyer paid more than $100,000 of the asking price.

Buyers in Cook and adjacent counties have a range of options, she said, from remote off-the-grid “shacks” to in-town properties. While most buyers are still shopping for a second home, she often deals with buyers who want to buy a property that can be used as a short-term vacation rental.

“Most of these properties are well outside of what would be considered the ‘affordable housing’ price range,“ she said.