Bedford, KY population, income and ZIP codes

Bedford city is a very small community in Kentucky, with 289 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #426 of 554 ranked by population — larger than 23% of them. The median age here is 48.2 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 Bedford city earn a median of $33,750 a year, 57% below the national figure of $78,538 and 39% below the $55,469 median for the 246 Kentucky 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 36.7% 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 Bedford city is valued at $81,100, 73.3% below the national figure and 48% below the $157,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $865 a month, 38.5% below the national figure, or roughly $10,380 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 30.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. 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. 44% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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.

Bedford city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 30.8% of median income while homes cost only 2.4× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. With 289 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Bedford city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.