Thornton, California.
Typical home $451,446 (-0.0% in a year). Stockton, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$1,197 (+102%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Down $10 -0%
- $451,456$451,446 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $45,037 +11%
- $406,409$451,446 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.
- Thornton$2,370
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 33 years.
Typical home values in Thornton, CA fell 0.0% over the past year — slower than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Thornton, San Joaquin County, California
Thornton, in San Joaquin County, had 1,004 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in San Joaquin County was 6.5% in August 2026, and the county had 0.9% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in San Joaquin County work in schools and health care, then shops.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Thornton is a small community in San Joaquin County in the Central Valley, with a population that is small enough for neighbors to know one another. Homes here are priced well below what many Californians pay, and typical household incomes across the county are modest next to the state's big metro areas. Fewer adults here hold a four-year degree than across the country as a whole.
Work. Most residents who hold jobs work in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, in professional and business services, or in manufacturing. Across San Joaquin County, the largest workplaces include the Stockton Unified and Lodi Unified school districts and Amazon's warehousing operations. Commutes here run longer than is typical, and few people work from home. The county has added jobs over the past year, though unemployment there is slightly lower than a year ago.
Things to do. The Cosumnes River runs in or beside town, and the Cosumnes River Preserve, a protected area, is right alongside it, a good spot for a quiet walk. Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is a short drive away. For a longer outing, Sutter's Fort and the Crocker Art Museum are a longer drive away. Winters are cool with little or no snow, summers are hot, and rainfall is on the light side.
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- 12%of adults have a degree
- 32 mintypical commute
- 7%work from home
What people in San Joaquin County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. San Joaquin County had 290,380 jobs in 2025, 0.9% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 57° and lows near 39°; warmest in July, with highs near 92° and lows near 59°. About 18 inches of rain a year, and little or no snow.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Lodi weather station, 11 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in San Joaquin County
- Stockton UnifiedSchool district3,656FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage3,623
- CDCR CA Health Care FacilityCorrectional institutions3,473
- Lodi UnifiedSchool district2,827FTE
- AmazonGeneral warehousing and storage2,717
- St. Josephs Medical CenterGeneral hospital2,389FTE
- San Joaquin General HospitalLocal government2,342
- Manteca UnifiedSchool district2,254FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 608 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 100,955 people in all across the county; Thornton has one of its own. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and hospitals from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023); 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
- DroughtVery high
- EarthquakesRelatively high
- 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 Thornton’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, very 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 San Joaquin County and the Stockton, CA metro.
Thornton home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Thornton$451,446
- California$761,538
- United States$366,157
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.
Zip codes with a Thornton address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Thornton — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.