Photo: Sarah Stierch (Missvain), CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsPeople ask this question in every season, usually with a job offer or a family reason behind it. The answer is different for a remote worker, a retiree and a family with school-age children, so the useful move is to look at what the government counts and match it to your own list.
Who lives in Reno
Reno is a young-leaning city by national standards. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024 puts the median age at 37.1 across 114,322 households, and it shows 50.2 percent of those households renting. Next door, Sparks has about 110,000 residents and 59.8 percent of its households own their homes.
Newcomers are common. About 34.1 percent of Reno householders moved into their current home in 2020 or later, and in Sparks the share is 30.6 percent. If you arrive this year, you will not be the only person in your building or on your street still learning where the nearest pharmacy is.
How fast the area is growing
The Census Bureau's population estimates give Washoe County 477,082 residents in 2020 and 509,386 in 2025. That is an increase of about 6.8 percent in five years. In 2025 the county gained about 2,143 people on net from other parts of the country, and another 1,560 from abroad.
The one-year American Community Survey for 2024 counted 18,350 Washoe residents who had lived in another state a year earlier, out of about 502,000 people. That works out to roughly 3.7 percent of the population arriving from out of state in a single year.
Income, rent and home prices
Reno's median household income is about 80,760 dollars, close to the national median of 80,734 and above Nevada's 78,260. The Reno metro area, which includes Sparks, sits higher at 87,485. Median gross rent in the city is 1,556 dollars a month and the median home value is 548,300 dollars, against a national home value of 332,700.
Put another way, a typical Reno home is worth about 6.8 times the median household income, where the national ratio is about 4.1. The cost of living page shows the Bureau of Economic Analysis price index behind this, and the housing page goes through owning and renting.
Weather and setting
Reno gets 7.35 inches of precipitation and 20.9 inches of snow in an average year, based on the NOAA 1991 to 2020 normals at the airport. The July average high is 93.9 degrees and the January average low is 26.1. The city sits at roughly 4,400 to 4,600 feet in the valley, with the Sierra Nevada to the west. Details are on the weather page and the altitude page.
Work
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated the Reno metro unemployment rate at 3.5 percent for August 2026 (preliminary), and counted about 284,900 nonfarm jobs that month before seasonal adjustment. Warehousing and trucking are large local employers. The jobs and economy page has the breakdown.
Questions worth asking before you decide
- Do you want a dry climate with four seasons, including real snow days between December and March?
- Can your budget handle a median home value near 548,300 dollars, or a median rent near 1,556 dollars?
- Will your work be in the valley, or will you commute toward Carson City, Truckee or Fernley? See commuting and transit.
- Do you want to be within an hour of Lake Tahoe, and are you comfortable driving mountain roads in winter?
- Does a neighborhood with a median build year near 1975 or one built after 2000 fit you better? Compare them on the neighborhoods page.