Colton, California.
Typical home $496,874 (+1.4% in a year), asking rent $1,929 (+2.8%). Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,422 (+120%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $6,905 +1%
- $489,969$496,874 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $98,691 +25%
- $398,183$496,874 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.
- Colton$2,608
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 16 years.
Typical home values in Colton, CA rose 1.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Colton, CA rose 2.8% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Owning the typical home in Colton runs $1,501/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $1,676 in Jan 2025.
That is $3,430 a month against $1,929 rent: a $2,608 mortgage payment, plus $290 property tax and $532 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Colton
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$3,430
- Renting$1,929
- Mortgage only$2,608
Property tax · $290/mo 0.70% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for San Bernardino County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $532/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 Colton, San Bernardino County, California
Colton is a city of 53,909 people in San Bernardino County. Half its households earn more than $71,208 a year and half less, against $85,478 across San Bernardino County; 14% of its people live below the poverty line. 53% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 47% are rented. Unemployment in Colton was 5.5% in August 2026, and San Bernardino County had 0.4% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then transport and warehouses.
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. Colton is a city in San Bernardino County with a young population compared with much of the country. Incomes run below the county's, and fewer homes are lived in by their owners than you might expect, so renting is common here. Typical home values and rents are high, and fewer adults hold a four-year degree than in many places. Winters are mild, summers are hot and dry, and snow is rare.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in transport, warehouses and utilities, or in shops. Among the largest workplaces in Colton are Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, Colton Joint Unified and Walmart. Job numbers across the county have edged up slightly over the past year, and the commute for the typical worker is fairly long, with a small number working from home.
Things to do. Lytle Creek and San Timoteo Creek, both rivers in or beside town, offer a bit of open ground close to home, and Fort Benson is also in or beside town. A short drive away are the Riverside Fox Theater, the Museum of Riverside and Riverside International Raceway, a race track. For a longer outing, Big Bear Lake, a reservoir, lies a longer drive away.
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- 16,897households
- 17%of adults have a degree
- 14%below the poverty line
- 28 mintypical commute
- 9%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. San Bernardino County had 848,961 jobs in 2025, 0.4% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 69° and lows near 43°; warmest in August, with highs near 97° and lows near 64°. About 10 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Riverside Citrus Experiment weather station, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Colton
- Arrowhead Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital3,360FTE
- Colton Joint UnifiedSchool district2,056FTE
- WalmartGeneral warehousing and storage1,042
- WalmartWarehouse clubs and supercenters314
- Cambridge Sierra HoldingsSkilled nursing facilities245
- Chino Valley ranchersFarm product warehouse and storage241
- Aim Recycling ColtonRecyclable materials merchant wholesalers191
- CPS SolutionsPharmacies161
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 46 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 7,991 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 floodingVery high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Colton’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 San Bernardino County and the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA metro.
Colton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Colton$496,874
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Colton listings, and the typical home goes pending in 21 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.
- Colton21.48%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Colton21
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Colton80
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Colton26
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Colton$474,914
- United States$371,407
Zip codes with a Colton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Colton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.