Pennington, New Jersey.
Typical home $666,323 (+1.4% in a year), asking rent $3,020 (+5.2%). Trenton-Princeton, NJ metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,875 (+116%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $9,483 +1%
- $656,840$666,323 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $155,201 +30%
- $511,122$666,323 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.
- Pennington$3,497
- New Jersey$3,019
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 13 years.
Typical home values in Pennington, NJ rose 1.4% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Pennington, NJ rose 5.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Pennington runs $2,500/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $2,597 in Jan 2026.
That is $5,520 a month against $3,020 rent: a $3,497 mortgage payment, plus $1,310 property tax and $713 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Pennington
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$5,520
- Renting$3,020
- Mortgage only$3,497
Property tax · $1,310/mo 2.36% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Mercer County, NJ
Insurance & upkeep · $713/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 Pennington, Mercer County, New Jersey
Pennington is a borough of 2,802 people in Mercer County. Half its households earn more than $192,586 a year and half less, against $100,645 across Mercer County; 5% of its people live below the poverty line. 82% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 18% are rented. Unemployment in Mercer County was 4.9% in August 2026, and the county had 1.1% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents 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. Pennington is a small borough where most homes are lived in by their owners, and where residents tend to be older than in most of the country. Household incomes are well above the county's, and a four-year degree is common among adults. Winters are cold, with snow that lingers, summers turn properly hot, and rain and melted snow fall steadily through the year.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, manufacturing, and restaurants, hotels and entertainment. Across Mercer County, some of the largest workplaces are Princeton University, Johnson & Johnson and Capital Health's Hopewell medical center. Commutes are of moderate length, and a good number of people work from home. The county has recently seen slightly fewer jobs than the year before.
Things to do. Baldwins Creek runs in or beside town, a quiet stream for a walk along the water. A short drive away are the Princeton Art Museum, a museum, and McCarter Theatre, a theatre. Lake Carnegie, a reservoir, is also a short drive away.
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- 1,152households
- 73%of adults have a degree
- 5%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 24%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Mercer County had 261,312 jobs in 2025, 1.1% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 40° and lows near 24°; warmest in July, with highs near 86° and lows near 67°. About 27 inches of snow and 46 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Trenton Mercer County Airport weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Mercer County
- Princeton UniversityUniversity or college7,778
- Johnson JohnsonPharmaceutical4,059
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage3,337
- Capital Health MED Center - HopewellGeneral hospital3,052FTE
- Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc. (OAPI)Druggists' sundries merchant wholesalers2,077
- Capital Health Regional Medical CTRGeneral hospital2,003FTE
- Hamilton Township Public School DistrictSchool district1,811FTE
- Trenton Public School DistrictSchool district1,691FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 265 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 49,148 people in all across the county; Pennington has two 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
- Strong windRelatively high
- HurricanesRelatively moderate
- Ice stormsRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherRelatively moderate
- Heat wavesRelatively 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 Pennington’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 Mercer County and the Trenton-Princeton, NJ metro.
Pennington home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Pennington$666,323
- New Jersey$575,123
- 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 4 Pennington listings — the market is cooling.
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.
- Pennington26.19%
- United States26.90%
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Pennington57
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Pennington16
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Pennington$599,601
- United States$371,553
Zip codes with a Pennington address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Pennington — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.