Goleta, California.
Typical home $1,349,075 (+1.8% in a year), asking rent $3,838 (+1.5%). Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$4,044 (+133%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $23,811 +2%
- $1,325,264$1,349,075 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $300,690 +29%
- $1,048,386$1,349,075 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.
- Goleta$7,081
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Goleta, CA rose 1.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Goleta, CA rose 1.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Goleta runs $5,413/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $5,898 in May 2024.
That is $9,251 a month against $3,838 rent: a $7,081 mortgage payment, plus $726 property tax and $1,444 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Goleta
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$9,251
- Renting$3,838
- Mortgage only$7,081
Property tax · $726/mo 0.65% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Santa Barbara County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,444/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 Goleta, Santa Barbara County, California
Goleta is a city of 32,690 people in Santa Barbara County. Half its households earn more than $122,370 a year and half less, against $98,161 across Santa Barbara County; 9% of its people live below the poverty line. 51% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 49% are rented. Unemployment in Goleta was 3.4% in August 2026, and Santa Barbara County had 0.6% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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. Goleta is a city on the Santa Barbara County coast, and its residents are younger than in many American towns. Incomes run above the county's, and a high share of adults hold a four-year degree. Homes here are expensive to buy and expensive to rent, and owners and renters live in roughly equal numbers.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, and in manufacturing. Teledyne FLIR Goleta and Goleta Union Elementary Schools are among the largest workplaces in town. Unemployment is low and has barely changed over the past year, though jobs across the county slipped slightly last year. Commutes are fairly short, and a good number of people work from home.
Things to do. Goleta Beach is in or beside town, and the Art, Design and Architecture Museum at UCSB is close by as well. A short drive away are the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Winters are mild and cool rather than cold, summers stay comfortably warm, and rain and snow are modest through the year.
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- 12,348households
- 49%of adults have a degree
- 9%below the poverty line
- 18 mintypical commute
- 18%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Santa Barbara County had 214,947 jobs in 2025, 0.6% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in February, with highs near 64° and lows near 44°; warmest in August, with highs near 74° and lows near 58°. About 17 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport weather station, a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Goleta
- Raytheon_Goleta_CA_RVS962
- Goleta Union Elementary SchoolsSchool district545FTE
- Teledyne FLIR GoletaDiodes, solid-state, manufacturing543
- Raytheon_Goleta_CA_EW443
- Big Green Cleaning Company - Santa BarbaraJanitorial services381
- Cottage HealthMedical laboratory337
- Costco WholesaleWholesale grocer329
- Goleta Valley Cottage HospitalGeneral hospital313FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 51 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 7,444 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals 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
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Goleta’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 Santa Barbara County and the Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA metro.
Goleta home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Goleta$1,349,075
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Goleta listings, and the typical home goes pending in 27 days — 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.
- Goleta20.38%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Goleta27
- United States21
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Goleta52
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Goleta22
Zip codes with a Goleta address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Goleta — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.