Saratoga, California.
Typical home $3,974,406 (+4.2% in a year), asking rent $6,140 (+7.9%). San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$11,863 (+132%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $161,281 +4%
- $3,813,125$3,974,406 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $881,170 +28%
- $3,093,237$3,974,406 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.
- Saratoga$20,861
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 14 years.
Typical home values in Saratoga, CA rose 4.2% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Saratoga, CA rose 7.9% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Saratoga runs $21,198/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $21,675 in Jan 2025.
That is $27,338 a month against $6,140 rent: a $20,861 mortgage payment, plus $2,222 property tax and $4,255 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Saratoga
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$27,338
- Renting$6,140
- Mortgage only$20,861
Property tax · $2,222/mo 0.67% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Santa Clara County, CA
Insurance & upkeep · $4,255/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 Saratoga, Santa Clara County, California
Saratoga is a city of 31,051 people in Santa Clara County. 86% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 14% are rented. Unemployment in Saratoga was 4.7% in August 2026, and Santa Clara County had 0.3% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in professional services, then manufacturing.
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. Saratoga is a city where most homes are lived in by their owners, and home values and rents run very high. Residents tend to be older than in much of the country, and incomes in the county are well above the national picture. Very few people live below the poverty line, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. Winters are mild, with the coldest days in December still staying above freezing, and summers are warm. Snow is rare, and the year brings a modest amount of rain.
Work. Residents work mostly in professional and business services, manufacturing, schools and hospitals, and shops. Closer to home, the largest workplaces in town include West Valley College, Sutter Visiting Nurse Association and Hospice, and Saratoga Union Elementary Schools. A good share of people work from home, and the typical commute is moderate. Unemployment has eased a little over the past year, and across the county the number of jobs has edged up.
Things to do. Hakone Gardens, a botanical garden, is in or beside town. A short drive away are the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, a museum of ancient Egyptian artifacts, and California's Great America, an amusement park. Levi's Stadium, a large stadium, is also a short drive away, and the Computer History Museum is a longer drive.
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- 10,783households
- 81%of adults have a degree
- 3%below the poverty line
- 25 mintypical commute
- 37%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Santa Clara County had 1,119,582 jobs in 2025, 0.3% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 58° and lows near 40°; warmest in July, with highs near 85° and lows near 56°. About 22 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Los Gatos weather station, 4 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Saratoga
- West Valley CollegeTwo-year college477
- Sutter Visiting Nurse Association and HospiceHealthcare189
- Saratoga Union Elementary SchoolsSchool district186FTE
- West Valley Mission Community College District OfficeTwo-year college165
- Children's Recovery Center 2Skilled nursing facilities150
- Capso VisionArc lamp units, electrotherapeutic, manufacturing95
- SaratogaMail and parcel delivery40
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 4 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 474 people in all. Colleges come from IPEDS (NCES, 2023–24) 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
- Heat wavesRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Saratoga’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 Santa Clara County and the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA metro.
Saratoga home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Saratoga$3,974,406
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 5 Saratoga listings, and the typical home goes pending in 21 days — 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.
- Saratoga21.12%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Saratoga21
- United States24
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Saratoga62
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Saratoga26
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Saratoga$3,758,003
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Saratoga102.10%
Zip codes with a Saratoga address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Saratoga — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.