Analysis · Published
One county, an almost eightfold gap in city home values
An August 2026 snapshot. Figures below are fixed to August 31, 2026; the linked profiles continue to refresh.
When I look at a county map, it is tempting to read one color as one housing market. Los Angeles County is a good reason not to. I compared its 76 published city profiles in the same August 2026 Zillow release: the typical home value ranged from $461,962 in Lancaster to $3,667,785 in Beverly Hills. That is a 7.9× gap inside one county boundary.
The county-wide figure was $873,008. It is useful for comparing Los Angeles County with other counties, but it does not tell you what a typical home costs in each city. Here are six city values from that snapshot, alongside the county figure.
Bars start at zero and use one dollar scale. The county row is an aggregate, not a seventh city.
A county boundary is not a neighborhood comparison
The two endpoints make the size of the spread visible, but they are not neighboring-city substitutes. Lancaster and Beverly Hills have different locations and housing stocks. These numbers alone cannot explain the gap, rank their neighborhoods, or tell someone which is the better place to live.
The more useful next step is to narrow the geography. For Beverly Hills, I would start with the same-month values in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles. Those are still broad citywide measures, not comparisons of equivalent houses or identical commutes.
Lower prices are not the whole affordability story
A smaller dollar figure is only part of the question. Local household income, borrowing costs, taxes, insurance, savings, and the home being purchased all matter. The live profiles include matched Census household-income data where available; the comparison tool puts the price and income measures side by side without turning them into a mortgage approval estimate.
Compare Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and Lancaster
The comparison tool uses the latest available figures, so it may differ from this dated article.
How I checked the finding
I selected published city profiles assigned to Los Angeles County, California, with an August 31, 2026 observation. Beverly Hills and Lancaster were the highest and lowest values in that 76-city set. Dividing $3,667,785 by $461,962 gives 7.94, rounded to 7.9×. The six charted cities are illustrative selections from that set, not a list of every city.
HomePriceMap publishes a city profile only when it has Zillow price data and a matched FBI reporting population of at least 5,000. That publication rule limits this analysis: the range is among those profiles, not every incorporated city, unincorporated place, or neighborhood in the county.
The underlying measure is Zillow's middle-tier Home Value Index (ZHVI), a typical home value rather than a simple mean or median of recent sales. The county figure comes from Zillow's county series; it is not an average of the 76 city figures. Zillow can revise past observations, so I saved the exact input values used here rather than making the article silently change with the daily feed.
Sources: Zillow Research housing data and its ZHVI methodology. Download the frozen August source snapshot (JSON) or read HomePriceMap's data matching and limitations.
For a wider view, open the city map, browse California's tracked profiles, or see why the cheapest counties are not always the most affordable.