Chualar, California.
Typical home $732,038 (-0.1% in a year). Salinas, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,831 (+91%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $882 -0%
- $732,920$732,038 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $71,598 +11%
- $660,440$732,038 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.
- Chualar$3,842
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 34 years.
Typical home values in Chualar, CA fell 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Chualar, Monterey County, California
Chualar, in Monterey County, had 1,185 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Monterey County was 5.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Monterey County work in schools and health care, then farming.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 24 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Chualar is a small community in the Salinas Valley of Monterey County, with a population that makes it a place where neighbors tend to know one another. Homes here are priced well above what the typical home costs across much of the country, and household incomes across Monterey County are well above what many American households earn. The valley setting shapes daily life, with farm fields on every side and a rural feel despite the busy towns not far away.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, and a good number work in farming, with others in restaurants and hotels or in professional and business services. Across Monterey County, the largest workplaces include farm labor contractors and packers such as Foothill Packing and Taylor Fresh Foods, along with Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula. The county has seen slightly fewer jobs than the year before, and unemployment has stayed about where it was a year earlier. The typical commute is a moderate one.
Things to do. For a day out, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the best known aquariums in the country, and the National Steinbeck Center is a museum honoring the writer from nearby Salinas; both are a longer drive away. Pinnacles National Park, also a longer drive away, offers a national park setting for hiking and views. Winters here are mild, with cool days and chilly nights, and the year brings only modest rain, so outings are possible in most months.
Report a mistake
- 26 mintypical commute
What people in Monterey County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Monterey County had 198,525 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 62° and lows near 41°; warmest in September, with highs near 74° and lows near 54°. About 13 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Salinas Municipal Airport weather station, 8 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Monterey County
- Foothill PackingAgriculture production or harvesting crews3,128
- Premier Packing of CaliforniaFarm labor contractors2,754
- PRO AG HarvestingFarm labor contractors2,687
- Taylor Fresh FoodsPacking fruits and vegetables2,619
- Community Hosp. Monterey PeninsulaGeneral hospital2,046FTE
- Dominguez FarmsFarm labor contractors2,042
- Camarillo Harvesting, LLC SalinasStrawberry farming2,000
- Tanimura & AntleVegetable and potato farming, vegetable dominant crops, field, bedding plants and seed production1,889
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 371 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 79,481 people in all across the county; Chualar has none of its own. Hospitals come 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
- DroughtVery high
- EarthquakesVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Chualar’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 Monterey County and the Salinas, CA metro.
Chualar home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Chualar$732,038
- California$761,538
- 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.
Zip codes with a Chualar address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Chualar — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.