Bakersfield, California.
Typical home $385,686 (+0.0% in a year), asking rent $1,901 (+3.1%). Bakersfield, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,111 (+122%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $182 +0%
- $385,503$385,686 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $69,823 +22%
- $315,862$385,686 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.
- Bakersfield$2,024
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in Bakersfield, CA rose 0.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Bakersfield, CA rose 3.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Bakersfield runs $819/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $966 in Jan 2025.
That is $2,721 a month against $1,901 rent: a $2,024 mortgage payment, plus $283 property tax and $413 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Bakersfield
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$2,721
- Renting$1,901
- Mortgage only$2,024
Property tax · $283/mo 0.88% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Kern County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $413/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Bakersfield, Kern County, California
Bakersfield is a city of 403,455 people in Kern County. Half its households earn more than $80,540 a year and half less, against $70,210 across Kern County; 16% of its people live below the poverty line. 61% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 39% are rented. Unemployment in Bakersfield was 6.9% in August 2026, and Kern County had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Bakersfield is a large city in Kern County, home to a younger population than much of the country. Incomes run above the county's, and most homes are lived in by their owners, though a good share of households rent. Winters are mild and cool, and summers turn very hot, with little rain or snow through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in professional and business services, and in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in the city are Kern High Schools, Kern Medical Center and Bakersfield Memorial Hospital. Unemployment has eased a little from a year earlier, though the county has seen a slight dip in the number of jobs.
Things to do. Beale Park and Jastro Park are parks in or beside town, and the Fox Theater, also in town, is a historic theatre for evenings out. For a change of pace, Kevin Harvick's Kern Raceway is a race track a short drive away, and the Kern River is a longer drive away.
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- 129,625households
- 24%of adults have a degree
- 16%below the poverty line
- 24 mintypical commute
- 8%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Kern County had 347,044 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 58° and lows near 39°; warmest in July, with highs near 97° and lows near 70°. About 7 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Bakersfield Northwest weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Bakersfield
- Kern High SchoolsSchool district3,770FTE
- Bakersfield City SchoolsSchool district3,617FTE
- Panama-Buena Vista Union SchoolsSchool district2,490FTE
- Kern Medical CenterGeneral hospital2,114FTE
- Kern County Department of Human ServicesWelfare programs administration1,754
- Bakersfield Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,642FTE
- Adventist Health BakersfieldGeneral hospital1,550FTE
- California State University-BakersfieldUniversity or college1,297
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 247 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 40,562 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24); 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
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- Earthquakesrelatively high in parts of BakersfieldRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Bakersfield’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Kern County and the Bakersfield, CA metro.
Bakersfield home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Bakersfield$385,686
- California$761,538
- 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 4 Bakersfield listings, and the typical home goes pending in 23 days — the market is heating up.
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.
- Bakersfield25.97%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Bakersfield23
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Bakersfield1,454
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Bakersfield448
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Bakersfield$389,851
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Bakersfield99.12%
Zip codes with a Bakersfield address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Bakersfield — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Bakersfield
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 93307 | Bakersfield | 85,945 | $1,789 | $315,833 |
| 93306 | Bakersfield | 74,116 | $1,664 | $346,380 |
| 93309 | Bakersfield | 63,217 | $1,677 | $343,293 |
| 93313 | Bakersfield | 61,843 | $2,375 | $412,222 |
| 93312 | Bakersfield | 58,384 | $2,452 | $454,169 |
| 93311 | Bakersfield | 55,555 | $2,128 | $471,875 |
| 93308 | Bakersfield | 55,078 | $1,570 | $343,006 |
| 93304 | Bakersfield | 51,037 | $1,447 | $291,355 |
| 93314 | Bakersfield | 35,407 | $2,439 | $575,000 |
| 93301 | Bakersfield | 13,620 | $1,413 | $303,249 |