Fort Walton Beach, FL population, income and ZIP codes

Fort Walton Beach city is a mid-size town in Florida, with 20,956 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #198 of 955 ranked by population — larger than 79% of them. The median age here is 39.2 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 Walton Beach city earn a median of $66,556 a year, 15.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 3% below the $68,617 median for the 775 Florida cities we cover. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 13.8% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Fort Walton Beach city is valued at $296,000, 2.4% below the national figure and 3% below the $305,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,268 a month, 9.8% below the national figure, or roughly $15,216 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 22.9% 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 4.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 59.7% 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.