Ferndale, California.
Typical home $480,450 (+1.5% in a year). Eureka-Arcata, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$665 (+36%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $7,199 +2%
- $473,251$480,450 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $111,984 -19%
- $592,434$480,450 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.
- Ferndale$2,522
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Ferndale, CA rose 1.5% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Ferndale, Humboldt County, California
Ferndale is a city of 1,398 people in Humboldt County. Half its households earn more than $63,142 a year and half less, against $61,160 across Humboldt County; 13% of its people live below the poverty line. Unemployment in Humboldt County was 5.6% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Humboldt County 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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Ferndale is a small city, and its residents are older than in most American places, with a median age well above the national one. Incomes are a little higher than across Humboldt County, though a share of residents still live below the poverty line. Homes here are worth more than many people expect for a small town on the North Coast, and a four-year degree is held by a fair number of adults. Winters are cool and wet rather than harsh, and summers stay mild, with the warmest days arriving in September.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by shops, restaurants and hotels, and professional and business services. Across Humboldt County, some of the largest workplaces are California State Polytechnic University-Humboldt, St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka, and the California Department of Transportation's road and bridge repair facilities. Unemployment across the county has held about where it was a year ago, and the number of jobs has edged up slightly.
Things to do. The Ferndale Museum is in or beside town, and the Salt River and the Eel River Estuary Preserve are a short drive away, along with the Humboldt Botanical Gardens. For a longer outing, Humboldt Redwoods State Park is a longer drive away and is a protected area of old redwood forest.
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- 757households
- 32%of adults have a degree
- 13%below the poverty line
What people in Humboldt County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Humboldt County had 52,251 jobs in 2025, 0.8% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 55° and lows near 42°; warmest in September, with highs near 72° and lows near 52°. About 48 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Scotia weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Humboldt County
- California State Polytechnic University-HumboldtUniversity or college1,189
- St. Joseph Hospital - EurekaGeneral hospital818FTE
- College of the RedwoodsTwo-year college472
- Eureka City SchoolsSchool district461FTE
- CAL FireCal fire420
- MAD River Community HospitalGeneral hospital415FTE
- Humboldt Sawmill CoBoards, wood, made from logs or bolts313
- Danco BuildersMultifamily building construction general contractors301
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 93 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 10,058 people in all across the county; Ferndale has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals 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
- EarthquakesVery high
- LandslidesRelatively high
- TsunamisRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Ferndale’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 Humboldt County and the Eureka-Arcata, CA metro.
Ferndale home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Ferndale$480,450
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Ferndale12
Zip codes with a Ferndale address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Ferndale — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.