Lee Vining, California.
Typical home $507,910 (+3.0% in a year).
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,498 (+128%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $14,995 +3%
- $492,916$507,910 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $103,067 +25%
- $404,843$507,910 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.
- Lee Vining$2,666
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 15 years.
Typical home values in Lee Vining, CA rose 3.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Lee Vining, Mono County, California
Lee Vining, in Mono County, had 217 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Mono County was 4.3% in August 2026, and the county had 0.6% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Mono County work in restaurants and hotels, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Lee Vining is a very small community on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, in Mono County. Winters are cold and snowy, with a good deal of snow each year, while summers are warm. Homes here are valued above what is typical across much of the country, and no one in town is recorded as living below the poverty line.
Work. Many residents work in restaurants, hotels and entertainment, in schools, hospitals and social care, in banks, insurance and property, or in the building trades. Across Mono County, the largest workplaces include Mammoth Mountain SKI Area, the Southern Mono Health Care District and Mammoth Unified, the school district. Unemployment in the county is about where it stood a year earlier, and the number of jobs has edged up slightly.
Things to do. Mono Lake is a short drive away, and the Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, a protected area beside it, is just as close. For a longer drive, Yosemite National Park lies on the other side of the mountains, with waterfalls such as Yosemite Falls among its best known sights.
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- 0%below the poverty line
What people in Mono County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Mono County had 8,196 jobs in 2025, 0.6% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 41° and lows near 21°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 54°. About 70 inches of snow and 15 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lee Vining weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Mono County
- Mammoth Mountain SKI AreaAlpine skiing facilities with accommodations1,958
- Southern Mono Health Care DistrictCritical access hospital251FTE
- Mammoth UnifiedSchool district114FTE
- Aspen Skiing Company104
- VonsSupermarkets and other grocery stores103
- Eastern Sierra UnifiedSchool district66FTE
- Alterra Mountain CompanySkiing facilities65
- Forest ServiceFederal government · Department of Agriculture61
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 12 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 3,016 people in all across the county; Lee Vining has one of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (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
- WildfireVery high
- Winter weatherVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- LandslidesRelatively moderate
- DroughtRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Lee Vining’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 Mono County.
Lee Vining home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Lee Vining$507,910
- 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.
Zip codes with a Lee Vining address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Lee Vining — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.