South Bend, IN population, income and ZIP codes

South Bend city is a mid-size city in Indiana, with 102,866 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #4 of 976 ranked by population — larger than 99% of them. The median age here is 33.9 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in South Bend city earn a median of $52,512 a year, 33.1% below the national figure of $78,538 and 15% below the $61,527 median for the 355 Indiana 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 22.6% 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 South Bend city is valued at $124,500, 59% below the national figure and 14% below the $145,600 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,000 a month, 28.9% below the national figure, or roughly $12,000 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 2.4×, 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. 58.8% 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.