Walnut Creek, California.
Typical home $990,472 (+1.3% in a year), asking rent $2,924 (+4.8%). San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,419 (+87%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $12,623 +1%
- $977,849$990,472 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $70,967 +8%
- $919,505$990,472 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.
- Walnut Creek$5,199
- California$3,997
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 47 years.
Typical home values in Walnut Creek, CA rose 1.3% over the past year — in step with the nation.
Asking rents in Walnut Creek, CA rose 4.8% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Walnut Creek runs $4,017/mo more than renting one. The gap peaked at $4,580 in Oct 2023.
That is $6,941 a month against $2,924 rent: a $5,199 mortgage payment, plus $681 property tax and $1,060 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Walnut Creek
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$6,941
- Renting$2,924
- Mortgage only$5,199
Property tax · $681/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 · $1,060/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 Walnut Creek, Contra Costa County, California
Walnut Creek is a city of 70,127 people in Contra Costa County. Half its households earn more than $130,432 a year and half less, against $127,229 across Contra Costa County; 6% of its people live below the poverty line. 64% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 36% are rented. Unemployment in Walnut Creek 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. Walnut Creek is a city in Contra Costa County where residents are older than in much of the country, and most homes are lived in by their owners. Household incomes run a little above the county's, few people live below the poverty line, and a large majority of adults hold a four-year degree. Homes and rents are expensive, and winters are mild and mostly dry, with little or no snow and summers that turn properly hot in July.
Work. Residents work mainly in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, banks, insurance and property, and shops. Among the largest workplaces in the city are the hospitals John Muir Medical Center and the Kaiser Permanente facility, and the California Department of Transportation also has a facility there. Commutes are fairly long, and a good many people work from home.
Things to do. The best-known places nearby are in San Francisco, a longer drive away, among them Golden Gate Park, a garden, and the California Academy of Sciences, an aquarium. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is another museum within that longer drive. The Sacramento River is also a longer drive away for time by the water.
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- 33,072households
- 70%of adults have a degree
- 6%below the poverty line
- 31 mintypical commute
- 31%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, 6 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Walnut Creek
- John Muir Medical Center - WCGeneral hospital2,143FTE
- KFH - Walnut CreekGeneral hospital1,357FTE
- TargetDiscount department stores391
- StoragePRO ManagementLessors of self storage units379
- TheKey - CA, Walnut Creek (1600 South Main Street)Homemaker's service for elderly or disabled persons, non-medical371
- MKA InternationalConstruction engineering services302
- Walnut Creek Elementary SchoolsSchool district298FTE
- Bay Medical ManagementMedical radiological laboratories250
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 57 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 12,554 people in all. Hospitals come 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
- Inland floodingVery high
- EarthquakesRelatively 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 Walnut Creek’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.
Walnut Creek home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Walnut Creek$990,472
- 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 4 Walnut Creek listings, and the typical home goes pending in 25 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.
- Walnut Creek25.73%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Walnut Creek25
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Walnut Creek360
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Walnut Creek109
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Walnut Creek$907,728
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Walnut Creek99.94%
Zip codes with a Walnut Creek address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Walnut Creek — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.
Zip codes in Walnut Creek
| 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 94598 | Walnut Creek | 27,206 | $3,266 | $1,369,644 |
| 94596 | Walnut Creek | 23,417 | $2,933 | $1,064,425 |
| 94597 | Walnut Creek | 23,129 | $2,711 | $972,248 |
| 94595 | Walnut Creek | 16,988 | $3,560 | $665,851 |