Brea, California.
Typical home $1,116,557 (+2.2% in a year), asking rent $2,916 (+3.3%). Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$3,182 (+119%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $24,311 +2%
- $1,092,246$1,116,557 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $244,518 +28%
- $872,039$1,116,557 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.
- Brea$5,861
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Brea, CA rose 2.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Brea, CA rose 3.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Brea runs $4,752/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,946 in Jan 2025.
That is $7,668 a month against $2,916 rent: a $5,861 mortgage payment, plus $612 property tax and $1,195 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Brea
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$7,668
- Renting$2,916
- Mortgage only$5,861
Property tax · $612/mo 0.66% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Orange County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,195/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 Brea, Orange County, California
Brea is a city of 47,325 people in Orange County. Half its households earn more than $131,129 a year and half less, against $116,289 across Orange County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 60% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 40% are rented. Unemployment in Brea was 4.6% in August 2026, and Orange County had 0.1% 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. Brea is a city in Orange County where most homes are lived in by their owners, though renters are a sizable part of the community too. Incomes run higher than across the county as a whole, and fewer people live below the poverty line than is common nationally. Homes and rents are expensive, and a four-year degree is common among adults. Winters are mild and summers warm, with little or no snow and rain that stays modest through the year.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, with many others in manufacturing, professional and business services, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in Brea are Beckman Coulter, which makes medical equipment, Trane Technologies, and the Brea-Olinda Unified school district. Commutes are fairly long, and a modest share of people work from home. Unemployment is a little lower than a year ago.
Things to do. Several well-known amusement parks are a short drive away, including Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is also a short drive from town. For a day out in Los Angeles, the La Brea Tar Pits museum is a longer drive.
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- 16,787households
- 52%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 15%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Orange County had 1,663,220 jobs in 2025, 0.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 71° and lows near 48°; warmest in August, with highs near 89° and lows near 66°. About 14 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Anaheim weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Brea
- GroceryWorkscom Operating CompanyGeneral warehousing and storage1,157
- Contract Services GroupBuilding cleaning services, janitorial1,148
- Trane Technologies887
- Diagnostics : Beckman Coulter - BreaInhalators, surgical and medical, manufacturing764
- Safran Passenger InnovationsComputer programming services, custom586
- Brea-Olinda UnifiedSchool district560FTE
- CAM FastenersAircraft equipment and supplies merchant wholesalers500
- City of BreaCity and town managers' offices478
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 63 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 11,585 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (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
- EarthquakesVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Wildfirerelatively high in parts of BreaRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Brea’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 Orange County and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA metro.
Brea home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Brea$1,116,557
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Brea listings, and the typical home goes pending in 15 days — 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.
- Brea21.56%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Brea15
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Brea76
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Brea29
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Brea$1,129,236
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Brea101.77%
Zip codes with a Brea address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Brea — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Brea
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 92821 | Brea | 41,623 | $2,727 | $1,097,409 |
| 92823 | Brea | 5,846 | $3,562 | $1,278,216 |