Buffalo, IA population, income and ZIP codes

Buffalo city is a small town in Iowa, with 1,090 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #268 of 1,026 ranked by population — larger than 73% of them. The median age here is 39.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. 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 city earn a median of $74,773 a year, 4.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 10% above the $67,791 median for the 290 Iowa 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 16.3% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Buffalo city is valued at $120,400, 60.3% below the national figure and 23% below the $156,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $821 a month, 41.6% below the national figure, or roughly $9,852 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 13.2% 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 1.6×, 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. 78.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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.