Colby, KS population, income and ZIP codes

Colby city is a mid-size town in Kansas, with 5,389 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #61 of 740 ranked by population — larger than 91% of them. The median age here is 32.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Colby city earn a median of $66,731 a year, 15% below the national figure of $78,538 and 5% above the $63,750 median for the 200 Kansas cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 8.2% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Colby city is valued at $150,700, 50.3% below the national figure and 15% above the $131,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $736 a month, 47.7% below the national figure, or roughly $8,832 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 2.3×, 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. 69.6% 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.

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.