Fern Forest, HI population, income and ZIP codes

Fern Forest CDP is a very small community in Hawaii, with 880 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #131 of 163 ranked by population — larger than 19% of them. The median age here is 53.6 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 Fern Forest CDP earn a median of $33,173 a year, 57.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 64% below the $92,062 median for the 124 Hawaii 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 29.3% 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 Fern Forest CDP is valued at $173,800, 42.7% below the national figure and 77% below the $768,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.2×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 86.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

A median age of 53.6 puts Fern Forest CDP 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. With 880 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Fern Forest CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Fern Forest CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.