John Day, Oregon.
Typical home $263,040 (-0.7% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$768 (+125%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $1,873 -1%
- $264,912$263,040 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $48,649 +23%
- $214,391$263,040 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.
- John Day$1,381
- Oregon$2,586
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 17 years.
Typical home values in John Day, OR fell 0.7% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in John Day, Grant County, Oregon
John Day is a city of 1,664 people in Grant County. Unemployment in Grant County was 5.6% in August 2026, and the county had 3.5% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Grant County work in schools and health care, then farming.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. John Day is a small city and the largest community in Grant County, in the high country of eastern Oregon. Residents are older than in most of the country, and household incomes in the county run below the national picture. Homes here are worth less than in much of the state, and the winters are cold while the summers turn hot and dry in feel only as far as the thermometer goes: warm afternoons in July, and a modest amount of snow and precipitation across the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with farming, forestry and mining close behind, then shops, restaurants and hotels. The Forest Service, Blue Mountain Hospital District and Sapphire at Valley View are among the largest workplaces in town. Unemployment across Grant County is a little lower than a year earlier, though the county has fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. The Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum sits in or beside town and is the closest place to start. A short drive away are Magone Lake and Clyde Holliday State Recreation Site, both good for time outdoors. For a longer outing, Malheur National Forest and the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness are a longer drive away.
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- 785households
- 18%of adults have a degree
- 13%below the poverty line
- 10%work from home
What people in Grant County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Grant County had 2,410 jobs in 2025, 3.5% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 39° and lows near 21°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 48°. About 10 inches of snow and 12 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the John Day weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in John Day
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture155
- Blue Mountain Hospital DistrictCritical access hospital127FTE
- Sapphire at Valley ViewAssisted-living facilities with on-site nursing facilities26
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 1 workplace with 20 or more staff, 26 people in all. Federal offices come from OPM's federal workforce data (2026) 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
- LightningVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- WildfireRelatively high
- Winter weatherRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in John Day’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 Grant County.
John Day home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- John Day$263,040
- Oregon$492,753
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 John Day 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.
Not enough data to draw this yet.
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- John Day17
Zip codes with a John Day address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls John Day — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.