Forestville, California.
Typical home $618,478 (+0.1% in a year), asking rent $2,238 . Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,232 (+61%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $611 +0%
- $617,867$618,478 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $6,108 -1%
- $624,586$618,478 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.
- Forestville$3,246
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Forestville, CA rose 0.1% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Forestville, Sonoma County, California
Forestville, in Sonoma County, had 3,264 people in the 2020 census. 72% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 28% are rented. Unemployment in Sonoma County was 4.5% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then construction.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Forestville is a small community in Sonoma County, home to far fewer people than the nearby towns. Most households own the place they live in, and a smaller share of residents live below the poverty line than you might expect from a rural area. A good number of adults hold a four-year degree, and the winters are cool and wet rather than harsh: December is the coldest month, with chilly days, little or no snow, and a fair amount of rain across the year. August is the warmest month, with pleasantly warm afternoons.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in the building trades, manufacturing and shops. Across Sonoma County, some of the largest workplaces are Kaiser Permanente, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and Santa Rosa Junior College. The typical commute is a modest one, and a good number of residents work from home.
Things to do. Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, a protected area of old redwood forest, is a short drive away, as is the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center, a museum devoted to the life and work of a famous cartoonist. For the coast, Goat Rock Beach is a longer drive away, and Fort Ross, a historic fort, is also a longer drive away.
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- 1,458households
- 39%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 21 mintypical commute
- 21%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Sonoma County had 206,393 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 58° and lows near 37°; warmest in August, with highs near 84° and lows near 50°. About 40 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Graton weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sonoma County
- Solairus AviationPassenger air transportation, nonscheduled1,800
- Kaiser PermanenteGeneral medical and surgical hospitals1,755
- Keysight TechnologiesDigital test equipment manufacturing1,517
- Santa Rosa Junior CollegeTwo-year college1,491
- Santa Rosa Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,444FTE
- Santa Rosa High SchoolsSchool district1,119FTE
- Sonoma State UniversityUniversity or college1,058
- KFH - Santa RosaGeneral hospital884FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 414 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 48,136 people in all across the county; Forestville 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
- LandslidesRelatively high
- DroughtRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Forestville’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 Sonoma County and the Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
Forestville home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Forestville$618,478
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Forestville listings — 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.
- Forestville26.92%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Forestville26
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Forestville8
Zip codes with a Forestville address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Forestville — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.