Fort Payne, AL population, income and ZIP codes

Fort Payne city is a mid-size town in Alabama, with 14,886 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #50 of 593 ranked by population — larger than 91% of them. The median age here is 39.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older 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 Fort Payne city earn a median of $48,623 a year, 38.1% below the national figure of $78,538 and 13% below the $55,687 median for the 322 Alabama cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 23.5% 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 Fort Payne city is valued at $158,100, 47.9% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $158,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $670 a month, 52.3% below the national figure, or roughly $8,040 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 16.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 67.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.