Santa Cruz city, CA — demographic & market profile
Santa Cruz city, CA demographic + market profile in one place — population, household income, home value, owner-occupancy, housing age, and the LocalVein Market Opportunity Score derived from those signals.
The numbers
- Total population
- 60,953
- Median household income
- $111,427
- Per-capita income
- $54,688
- Median home value
- $1,180,100
- Median gross rent (monthly)
- $2,302
- Total housing units
- 23,778
- Owner-occupied units
- 10,338
- Homeownership rate
- 43.5%
- Median year built
- 1970
- Median age
- 30.7
- Market Opportunity Score
- 44
Source: publicly available demographic data, latest release ingested by LocalVein. Updated April 2026.
How the Market Opportunity Score uses these numbers
The Market Opportunity Score (0-100) compresses the demographic profile into one agency-prospecting question: does this market support local-services agency retainers? Higher household income lifts the ceiling on what businesses here can afford to spend on marketing. Higher owner-occupancy correlates with longer customer tenure, which correlates with higher CLV — which means the local plumber here can spend more per acquisition.
Median home value and median year-built layer in housing-stock signals: older homes in expensive markets generate more home-services demand per capita than newer homes in equivalent markets. Population sets the absolute size of the addressable customer base — but a low-population market with the right income profile can outperform a high-population market without it.
For the full methodology see the glossary entry and the playbook.
See every Santa Cruz city prospect ranked by opportunity score
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