Fort Defiance, AZ population, income and ZIP codes

Fort Defiance CDP is a small town in Arizona, with 3,614 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #114 of 467 ranked by population — larger than 75% of them. The median age here is 32.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Fort Defiance CDP earn a median of $56,250 a year, 28.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 11% 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 16.9% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Fort Defiance CDP is valued at $37,800, 87.5% below the national figure and 84% below the $242,700 peer median, while median gross rent runs $802 a month, 43% below the national figure, or roughly $9,624 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.1% 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 0.7×, 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. 51.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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.

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.