Waldo, AL population, income and ZIP codes

Waldo town is a very small community in Alabama, with 282 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #477 of 593 ranked by population — larger than 19% of them. The median age here is 59.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in Waldo town earn a median of $33,125 a year, 57.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 41% 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 25.6% 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 Waldo town is valued at $59,700, 80.3% below the national figure and 62% below the $158,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,256 a month, 10.7% below the national figure, or roughly $15,072 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 45.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is severely stretched — a median-income renter clears the cost-burden line by a wide margin before utilities beyond the gross-rent definition. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 68.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Waldo town is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 45.5% of median income while homes cost only 1.8× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 59.9 puts Waldo town well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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.