Tomales, California.
Typical home $1,087,123 (+6.0% in a year). San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,114 (+59%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $61,508 +6%
- $1,025,615$1,087,123 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Down $107,888 -9%
- $1,195,011$1,087,123 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.
- Tomales$5,706
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, prices here aren't rising.
Typical home values in Tomales, CA rose 6.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Living in Tomales, Marin County, California
Tomales, in Marin County, had 187 people in the 2020 census. Unemployment in Marin County was 4.4% in August 2026, and the county had 0.8% fewer jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most people in Marin County work in professional services, then schools and health care.
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 It can be wrong or out of date.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. Tomales is a very small community on the northern edge of Marin County, with a population well below that of most towns and a median age that skews much older than the typical American community. Homes here are valued far above what is typical across the country, and household incomes across Marin County sit well above those in most of the nation.
Work. Residents who work are most often employed in professional and business services, in schools, hospitals and social care, in shops, and in banks, insurance and property. Across Marin County, some of the largest workplaces are BioMarin Pharmaceutical, MarinHealth Medical Center and Novato Unified. Job numbers across the county slipped a little last year, and unemployment is a touch lower than it was a year earlier.
Things to do. Tomales Bay State Park is a short drive away, and so is Abbotts Lagoon, a lake with coastal walking. A longer drive brings you to Point Reyes National Seashore, a large protected stretch of coast, and to Goat Rock Beach on the Sonoma coast. Winters are cool and wet, and summers are mild, so a jacket is useful for most of the year.
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What people in Marin County work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Marin County had 110,071 jobs in 2025, 0.8% fewer than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in December, with highs near 55° and lows near 41°; warmest in August, with highs near 78° and lows near 53°. About 54 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Occidental weather station, 10 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Marin County
- BioMarin PharmaceuticalPatent medicine preparations manufacturing2,086
- Marinhealth Medical CenterGeneral hospital1,429FTE
- Township Building ServicesJanitorial services1,257
- Ultragenyx - NovatoBiotechnology research and development laboratories or services in genetics691
- Novato UnifiedSchool district685FTE
- Dominican University of CaliforniaUniversity or college541
- College of MarinTwo-year college508
- KFH - San RafaelGeneral hospital489FTE
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 152 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 17,838 people in all across the county; Tomales has none of its own. Hospitals come from their Medicare cost reports (CMS, 2023), school districts from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24) and colleges from IPEDS (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
- LandslidesVery high
- WildfireVery high
- Inland floodingVery high
- EarthquakesVery high
- Coastal floodingRelatively high
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Tomales’ 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 Marin County and the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA metro.
Tomales home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Tomales$1,087,123
- 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 Tomales address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Tomales — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.