Laguna Woods, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Laguna Woods city is a mid-size town in California, with 17,342 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #378 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 76% of them. The median age here is 75 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 Laguna Woods city earn a median of $60,235 a year, 23.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 34% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 11.3% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Laguna Woods city is valued at $364,900, 20.3% above the national figure and 38% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $2,232 a month, 58.7% above the national figure, or roughly $26,784 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 44.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is severely stretched — a median-income renter clears the cost-burden line by a wide margin before utilities beyond the gross-rent definition. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 6.1×, 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. 71.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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 6.1× 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. A median age of 75 puts Laguna Woods city well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

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.