Sonora, CA population, income and ZIP codes

Sonora city is a small town in California, with 4,965 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #664 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 58% of them. The median age here is 38.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Sonora city earn a median of $62,621 a year, 20.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 31% 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 20% 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 Sonora city is valued at $379,300, 25% above the national figure and 36% below the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,164 a month, 17.2% below the national figure, or roughly $13,968 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. 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. 42.9% 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 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.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.