Buffalo Center, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Buffalo Center city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,000 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #290 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 71% of them. The median age here is 58.2 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 Buffalo Center city earn a median of $49,474 a year, 37% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa 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 8.3% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Buffalo Center city is valued at $93,800, 69.1% below the national figure and 40% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $646 a month, 54.1% below the national figure, or roughly $7,752 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 15.7% 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 1.9×, 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. 72.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. 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 58.2 puts Buffalo Center 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.