South El Monte, CA population, income and ZIP codes

South El Monte city is a mid-size town in California, with 19,413 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #358 of 1,618 ranked by population — larger than 77% of them. The median age here is 37.8 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 South El Monte city earn a median of $67,153 a year, 14.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 26% below the $91,111 median for the 1,050 California cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 23.7% 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 South El Monte city is valued at $578,100, 90.5% above the national figure and within a couple of points of the $589,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,708 a month, 21.5% above the national figure, or roughly $20,496 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 30.5% 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 8.6×, 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. 49.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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 8.6× 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.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.