Pleasant Hill, California.
Typical home $973,036 (+1.3% in a year), asking rent $3,042 (+5.8%). San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,436 (+91%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $12,230 +1%
- $960,806$973,036 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $52,411 +6%
- $920,625$973,036 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.
- Pleasant Hill$5,107
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 63 years.
Typical home values in Pleasant Hill, CA rose 1.3% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Asking rents in Pleasant Hill, CA rose 5.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Pleasant Hill runs $3,776/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,209 in Oct 2023.
That is $6,818 a month against $3,042 rent: a $5,107 mortgage payment, plus $669 property tax and $1,042 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Pleasant Hill
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$6,818
- Renting$3,042
- Mortgage only$5,107
Property tax · $669/mo 0.83% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Contra Costa County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $1,042/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 Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa County, California
Pleasant Hill is a city of 34,613 people in Contra Costa County. Half its households earn more than $145,029 a year and half less, against $127,229 across Contra Costa County; 7% of its people live below the poverty line. 63% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 37% are rented. Unemployment in Pleasant Hill was 4.9% in August 2026, and Contra Costa County had 0.1% more 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. Pleasant Hill is a city in Contra Costa County where most homes are lived in by their owners, and incomes run higher than across the county as a whole. The typical home is expensive, and rents are high too, so the cost of housing is a large part of daily life here. Residents are somewhat older than a typical American community, and a large share of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are cool and mild, summers are warm, snow is rare, and rain is modest.
Work. Many residents work in schools, hospitals and social care, with professional and business services, shops, and restaurants and hotels also common. Diablo Valley College, Target and Safeway are among the largest workplaces in town. The usual commute is fairly long, and a good number of people work from home. Unemployment is about where it was a year ago, and job growth across the county has been nearly flat.
Things to do. Most of what draws visitors lies in San Francisco, a longer drive away. Golden Gate Park is a large garden and a pleasant place to walk, the California Academy of Sciences is an aquarium and science museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a museum for contemporary work. Each is a longer drive from town, so they suit a full day out.
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- 13,258households
- 55%of adults have a degree
- 7%below the poverty line
- 30 mintypical commute
- 26%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Contra Costa County had 374,448 jobs in 2025, 0.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 58° and lows near 42°; warmest in July, with highs near 88° and lows near 58°. About 18 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Concord Wwtp weather station, 2 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Pleasant Hill
- Diablo Valley CollegeTwo-year college955
- TargetDiscount department stores223
- OMS Field ServicesForestry services197
- Carlton Senior Living Downtown Pleasant HillAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities147
- Carlton Senior Living Pleasant HillAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities131
- SafewaySupermarkets and other grocery stores122
- Carlton Senior Living Poets CornerAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities86
- Aegis of Pleasant HillAssisted-living facilities without on-site nursing care facilities82
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 17 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 1,449 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24). 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
- EarthquakesVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Pleasant Hill’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 Contra Costa County and the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA metro.
Pleasant Hill home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Pleasant Hill$973,036
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Pleasant Hill listings, and the typical home goes pending in 16 days — the market is heating up.
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.
- Pleasant Hill26.36%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Pleasant Hill16
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Pleasant Hill83
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Pleasant Hill32
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Pleasant Hill$953,583
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Pleasant Hill101.54%
Zip codes with a Pleasant Hill address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Pleasant Hill — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.