Chico, California.
Typical home $458,244 (+0.5% in a year), asking rent $1,561 (+1.7%). Chico, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$958 (+66%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $2,305 +1%
- $455,940$458,244 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $8,651 +2%
- $449,593$458,244 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.
- Chico$2,405
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Chico, CA rose 0.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Chico, CA rose 1.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Chico runs $1,600/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,790 in Oct 2023.
That is $3,161 a month against $1,561 rent: a $2,405 mortgage payment, plus $265 property tax and $491 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Chico
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$3,161
- Renting$1,561
- Mortgage only$2,405
Property tax · $265/mo 0.69% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Butte County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $491/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 Chico, Butte County, California
Chico is a city of 101,475 people in Butte County. Half its households earn more than $66,977 a year and half less, against $67,928 across Butte County; 23% of its people live below the poverty line. 43% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 57% are rented. Unemployment in Chico was 5.6% in August 2026, and Butte County had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
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. Chico is a city in Butte County with a young population for California, and many of its residents are students and early-career workers. Most households rent rather than own, and incomes run a little below the county's, though a good share of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cool and mild by national standards, summers get hot, and the rain and snowmelt that fall in a year are moderate.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by restaurants, hotels and entertainment, shops, and professional and business services. Enloe Medical Center, Chico Unified and Sierra Nevada Brewing Company are among the largest workplaces in town. Commutes are short, a fair number of people work from home, and the job market across the county has softened slightly over the past year.
Things to do. Bidwell Park and Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park lie in or beside town, along with the Museum of Northern California Art. A short drive away are the Chico Air Museum and the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge, a protected area. For a longer outing, Lake Oroville is a reservoir a longer drive away.
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- 42,943households
- 42%of adults have a degree
- 23%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 14%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Butte County had 78,544 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 56° and lows near 36°; warmest in July, with highs near 95° and lows near 61°. About 27 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chico Univ Farm weather station, 5 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Chico
- Enloe Medical CenterGeneral hospital3,095FTE
- Chico UnifiedSchool district1,354FTE
- Sierra Nevada Brewing CompanyBreweries459
- WalmartDiscount department stores257
- TargetDiscount department stores223
- UPSCouriers and express delivery services172
- Arbor Post AcuteSkilled nursing facilities160
- Winco FoodsStore159
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 66 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 9,525 people in all. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts 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
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Earthquakesrelatively high in parts of ChicoRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chico’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 Butte County and the Chico, CA metro.
Chico home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chico$458,244
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Chico listings, and the typical home goes pending in 18 days — 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.
- Chico28.51%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Chico18
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Chico289
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Chico89
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Chico$458,324
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Chico98.69%
Zip codes with a Chico address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chico — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Chico
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95926 | Chico | 40,567 | $1,422 | $428,163 |
| 95973 | Chico | 39,031 | $1,811 | $497,493 |
| 95928 | Chico | 37,409 | $1,520 | $453,028 |