Pacific Grove, California.
Typical home $1,366,979 (+1.6% in a year), asking rent $3,176 (+5.9%). Salinas, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$3,746 (+109%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $21,572 +2%
- $1,345,407$1,366,979 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $185,263 +16%
- $1,181,717$1,366,979 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.
- Pacific Grove$7,175
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 24 years.
Typical home values in Pacific Grove, CA rose 1.6% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Pacific Grove, CA rose 5.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Pacific Grove runs $6,179/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $6,951 in Oct 2023.
That is $9,355 a month against $3,176 rent: a $7,175 mortgage payment, plus $716 property tax and $1,463 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Pacific Grove
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$9,355
- Renting$3,176
- Mortgage only$7,175
Property tax · $716/mo 0.63% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Monterey County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,463/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.
Living in Pacific Grove, Monterey County, California
Pacific Grove is a city of 15,090 people in Monterey County. Half its households earn more than $106,065 a year and half less, against $97,230 across Monterey County; 8% of its people live below the poverty line. 50% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 50% are rented. Unemployment in Monterey County was 5.7% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Pacific Grove is a small coastal city whose residents are older than in most American places, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. Household incomes run above the county's, though homes here are costly to buy and to rent, and owners and renters are about evenly matched. Winters are cool and summers only mildly warm, with little or no snow and modest rainfall through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, and a good number work in restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Among the largest workplaces in town are Pacific Grove Unified, Front Porch and the Asilomar Conference Grounds. A fair number of people work from home, and the typical commute is fairly short.
Things to do. Asilomar State Beach and the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History are both in or beside town, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium sits right next door as well. A short drive away, 17-Mile Drive is one of the area's best-known tourist attractions.
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- 6,992households
- 60%of adults have a degree
- 8%below the poverty line
- 22 mintypical commute
- 22%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Monterey County had 198,525 jobs in 2025, 0.9% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 59° and lows near 44°; warmest in September, with highs near 71° and lows near 53°. About 20 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Monterey weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Pacific Grove
- Pacific Grove UnifiedSchool district240FTE
- Front PorchAssisted-living facilities with on-site nursing facilities143
- AramarkFood service contractors140
- Trader Joe's 0079 Pacific GroveGrocery store89
- LighthouseSkilled nursing facilities68
- SafewaySupermarkets and other grocery stores59
- Gibson Ave SNFSkilled nursing facilities37
- Pacific GroveMail and parcel delivery22
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 8 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 578 people in all. School districts come 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
- EarthquakesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Pacific Grove’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 Monterey County and the Salinas, CA metro.
Pacific Grove home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Pacific Grove$1,366,979
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Levy by levy, and a check of one home’s own bill, the site covers Ohio’s property tax.
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 3 Pacific Grove 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.
- Pacific Grove29.80%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Pacific Grove47
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Pacific Grove11
Zip codes with a Pacific Grove address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Pacific Grove — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.