Is it a buyer's or a seller's market? Six dials, updated monthly — speed, supply and seller behaviour, not just prices.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Santa Cruz listings, and the typical home goes pending in 28 days — the market is heating up.
Zillow's own model expects Santa Cruz home values to change +0.3% over the year to Sep 2027. A forecast, not a promise — it is revised every month, and Zillow publishes it with that caveat.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$3,070 (+106%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $51,959 +5%
- $1,084,195$1,136,154 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $120,590 +12%
- $1,015,564$1,136,154 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.
- Santa Cruz$5,963
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 31 years.
Typical home values in Santa Cruz, CA rose 4.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Santa Cruz, CA rose 3.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Santa Cruz runs $4,313/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,611 in Oct 2023.
That is $7,782 a month against $3,469 rent: a $5,963 mortgage payment, plus $602 property tax and $1,216 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Santa Cruz
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$7,782
- Renting$3,469
- Mortgage only$5,963
Property tax · $602/mo 0.64% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Santa Cruz County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,216/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.
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.
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.
- Santa Cruz27.50%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Santa Cruz28
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Santa Cruz683
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Santa Cruz200
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Santa Cruz$1,113,209
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Santa Cruz99.93%