Occidental, California.
Typical home $1,053,347 (+3.3% in a year). Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,389 (+76%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $33,773 +3%
- $1,019,574$1,053,347 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $8,686 +1%
- $1,044,661$1,053,347 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.
- Occidental$5,529
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
Typical home values in Occidental, CA rose 3.3% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Occidental, Sonoma County, California
Occidental, in Sonoma County, had 1,132 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Sonoma County was 4.5% in August 2026, and the county had 0.2% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Sonoma County work in schools and health care, then professional services.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Occidental is a small community in Sonoma County, home to a modest number of people. Homes here are worth far more than a typical American home, and the share of residents living below the poverty line is lower than in much of the country. Winters are cool and damp, with the coldest days in December still mild by most standards, and summers stay pleasantly warm rather than hot. Rain and melted snow add up to a good deal over the year.
Work. Residents most often work in schools, hospitals and social care, in professional and business services, in shops, and in manufacturing. Across Sonoma County, some of the largest workplaces are Kaiser Permanente, Santa Rosa Junior College and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Unemployment across the county has eased slightly compared with a year earlier, though the county has a few fewer jobs than it did the year before.
Things to do. A short drive brings you to Sonoma Coast State Park, a protected stretch of shoreline, and to Doran Regional Park, a beach near Bodega Bay. Ragle Ranch Regional Park, also a short drive away, offers open parkland. For a longer outing, Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve protects a grove of old redwood trees.
Report a mistake
- 7%below the poverty line
What people in Sonoma County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Sonoma County had 206,393 jobs in 2025, 0.2% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 55° and lows near 41°; warmest in August, with highs near 78° and lows near 53°. About 54 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Occidental weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Sonoma County
- Solairus AviationPassenger air transportation, nonscheduled1,800
- Kaiser PermanenteGeneral medical and surgical hospitals1,755
- Keysight TechnologiesDigital test equipment manufacturing1,517
- Santa Rosa Junior CollegeTwo-year college1,491
- Santa Rosa Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,444FTE
- Santa Rosa High SchoolsSchool district1,119FTE
- Sonoma State UniversityUniversity or college1,058
- KFH - Santa RosaGeneral hospital884FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 414 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 48,136 people in all across the county; Occidental has one of its own. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24), hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023) and school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); 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
- LandslidesRelatively high
- WildfireRelatively high
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
- Inland floodingRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Occidental’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively moderate. 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 Sonoma County and the Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
Occidental home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Occidental$1,053,347
- 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.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Occidental8
Zip codes with a Occidental address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Occidental — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.