Skip to content
ZipNumbers

San Diego County · California

San Diego, CA housing costs

What a home costs to buy and to rent here, how old the housing stock is, and how much of a paycheck rent takes — all from Census ACS 5-year estimates.

Quick answer

The median home in San Diego, CA is worth $848,500 and median gross rent is $2,223 a month. That is 180% above the national median home value of $303,400. 47.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, against 65% nationally.

Median home value
$848,500#6 of 94 metros
Median gross rent
$2,223/mo#3 of 94 metros
Owner-occupied
47.6%US average 65%
Median year built
1978Half the homes here are older than this

Can a median household here buy a median home?

Price-to-income is the plainest affordability yardstick there is.

San Diego's median household earns $98,657 a year while the median home is worth $848,500. That is a price-to-income ratio of 8.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally. Lenders have historically treated anything above 4× as stretched. Renters at the median put 32.2% of household income into gross rent; 30% is the federal threshold for “cost-burdened”.

Related data for San Diego

The same household, seen from three angles.

Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates

Tables B25077, B25064, B25003, B25035 and B25071, 2019-2023 ACS 5-year, Census place 666,000. Values are place-level, not metro-area-wide.