La Plata, New Mexico.
Typical home $315,606 (+6.8% in a year). Farmington, NM metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$875 (+112%) since Feb 2021.
- 1 year
- Up $20,210 +7%
- $295,397$315,606 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $74,011 +31%
- $241,596$315,606 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.
- La Plata$1,657
- New Mexico$1,658
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in La Plata, NM rose 6.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in La Plata, San Juan County, New Mexico
La Plata, in San Juan County, had 2,105 people in the 2020 census. 83% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 17% are rented. Unemployment in San Juan County was 5.3% in August 2026, and the county had 2.5% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in San Juan County work in schools and health care, then restaurants and hotels.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. La Plata is a small community in San Juan County, New Mexico, where most homes are lived in by their owners. Few adults here hold a four-year degree, and typical home values are modest. Winters are cold, with January the coldest month, and summers turn hot by July. Precipitation is light across the year, with rain and melted snow adding up to little.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with others in restaurants and hotels, in shops, or in farming and mining. Across San Juan County, the largest workplaces include Northern Navajo Medical Center, San Juan Regional Medical Center and Farmington Schools. Most people commute to a job rather than working from home, and the drive is a typical one for a rural county. Unemployment in the county has risen over the past year, while the number of jobs there has edged up.
Things to do. Mesa Verde National Park, a national park, is a longer drive away and is among the best-known places in the region. Aztec Ruins National Monument, an archaeological site, is also a longer drive, as is Lake Nighthorse, a lake. The Animas River and La Plata River offer river scenery for those willing to travel a little farther.
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- 814households
- 15%of adults have a degree
- 24 mintypical commute
- 3%work from home
What people in San Juan County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. San Juan County had 47,793 jobs in 2025, 2.5% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 43° and lows near 19°; warmest in July, with highs near 93° and lows near 61°. About 8 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Farmington Regional Airport weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in San Juan County
- Northern Navajo Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,630FTE
- San Juan Regional Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,600FTE
- Farmington SchoolsSchool district1,174FTE
- San Juan CollegeTwo-year college1,006
- Indian Health ServiceFederal government · Department of Health and Human Services831
- Central SchoolsSchool district815FTE
- San Juan CountyLegislative bodies737
- Hilcorp L48 WGas, natural, extraction664
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 67 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 7,513 people in all across the county; La Plata has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24), colleges from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) and federal offices from OPM's federal workforce data (2026); 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
- LightningRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- WildfireRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Cold wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in La Plata’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively low. 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 Juan County and the Farmington, NM metro.
La Plata home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- La Plata$315,606
- New Mexico$315,812
- 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.
Zip codes with a La Plata address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls La Plata — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.