Santa Rosa, California.
Typical home $708,056 (+0.5% in a year), asking rent $2,582 (+3.1%). Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,522 (+69%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $3,455 +0%
- $704,601$708,056 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $35,187 +5%
- $672,869$708,056 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 Rosa$3,716
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 68 years.
Typical home values in Santa Rosa, CA rose 0.5% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Santa Rosa, CA rose 3.1% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Santa Rosa runs $2,305/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $2,718 in Oct 2023.
That is $4,886 a month against $2,582 rent: a $3,716 mortgage payment, plus $412 property tax and $758 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Santa Rosa
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$4,886
- Renting$2,582
- Mortgage only$3,716
Property tax · $412/mo 0.70% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Sonoma County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $758/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 Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California
Santa Rosa is a city of 178,127 people in Sonoma County. Half its households earn more than $99,060 a year and half less, against $104,674 across Sonoma County; 10% of its people live below the poverty line. 57% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 43% are rented. Unemployment in Santa Rosa was 4.5% in August 2026, and Sonoma County had 0.2% 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 24 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. Santa Rosa is the largest city in Sonoma County, with residents who are older than the typical American. Household incomes sit a little below the county's, and more homes are lived in by their owners than by renters. Winters are cool and wet with little or no snow, and the warmest weather comes in September.
Work. Residents work mostly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, manufacturing and shops. Among the largest workplaces in the city are Santa Rosa Junior College, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and the Santa Rosa high school district. Job numbers across the county slipped slightly last year, and unemployment in the city is a little lower than a year earlier.
Things to do. In or beside town, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center and the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, a botanical garden, are both easy to reach. A short drive away, Trione-Annadel State Park offers protected open country for walking. For a day out, Point Reyes National Seashore and Fort Ross are a longer drive.
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- 68,321households
- 35%of adults have a degree
- 10%below the poverty line
- 23 mintypical commute
- 12%work from home
What residents 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 59° and lows near 38°; warmest in September, with highs near 84° and lows near 51°. About 32 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Santa Rosa weather station, under a mile away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Santa Rosa
- Santa Rosa Junior CollegeTwo-year college1,491
- Santa Rosa Memorial HospitalGeneral hospital1,444FTE
- Santa Rosa High SchoolsSchool district1,119FTE
- Sonic.NetWireless telecommunications carriers816
- Santa Rosa Elementary SchoolsSchool district697FTE
- Sonoma County Sheriff's OfficeSheriffs' offices530
- Sutter Bay Medical FoundationHealthcare460
- Viavi SolutionsManufacture of synthetic pigments and colorants for industrial and technical applications408
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 103 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,895 people in all. 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
- EarthquakesVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- Droughtrelatively high in parts of Santa RosaRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Santa Rosa’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 Sonoma County and the Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA metro.
Santa Rosa home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Santa Rosa$708,056
- 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 Santa Rosa listings, and the typical home goes pending in 23 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.
- Santa Rosa28.72%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Santa Rosa23
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Santa Rosa526
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Santa Rosa177
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Santa Rosa$705,989
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Santa Rosa100.69%
Zip codes with a Santa Rosa address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Santa Rosa — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Santa Rosa
| Zip activate to sort by Zip | Place activate to sort by Place | Population sorted descending, activate to sort ascending | Rent activate to sort by Rent | Home value activate to sort by Home value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 95403 | Santa Rosa | 45,806 | $2,851 | $723,684 |
| 95407 | Santa Rosa | 42,036 | $2,849 | $624,995 |
| 95404 | Santa Rosa | 37,011 | $2,412 | $804,800 |
| 95401 | Santa Rosa | 36,861 | $2,438 | $644,900 |
| 95409 | Santa Rosa | 25,616 | $2,790 | $767,738 |
| 95405 | Santa Rosa | 22,744 | $2,697 | $723,729 |