Cottonwood city, AZ population, income and ZIP codes

Cottonwood city is a mid-size town in Arizona, with 12,547 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #63 of 467 ranked by population — larger than 86% of them. The median age here is 55.8 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Cottonwood city earn a median of $47,162 a year, 40% below the national figure of $78,538 and 26% below the $63,545 median for the 206 Arizona cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 17.5% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Cottonwood city is valued at $286,000, 5.7% below the national figure and 18% above the $242,700 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,080 a month, 23.2% below the national figure, or roughly $12,960 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 27.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 6.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 51% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Home values sit at 6.1× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 55.8 puts Cottonwood city 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.