Grass Valley, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Grass Valley city is a mid-size town in California, with 14,126 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #417 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 74% of them. The median age here is 49.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Grass Valley city earn a median of $48,850 a year, 37.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 46% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 20.7% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in Grass Valley city is valued at $458,400, 51.1% above the national figure and 22% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,417 a month, essentially level with the national figure, or roughly $17,004 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 34.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 9.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 39.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Home values sit at 9.4× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. Small-area estimates still carry wider margins of error than state or national figures, so check the linked ACS tables before relying on them for lending, appraisal or legal work.