Chelsea, MA population, income and ZIP codes

Chelsea city is a small city in Massachusetts, with 39,460 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #38 of 248 ranked by population — larger than 85% of them. The median age here is 34.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 Chelsea city earn a median of $72,220 a year, 8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 27% below the $99,537 median for the 222 Massachusetts 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 20.6% 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 Chelsea city is valued at $476,500, 57.1% above the national figure and 4% below the $497,400 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,859 a month, 32.2% above the national figure, or roughly $22,308 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 30.9% 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 6.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 29.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

Home values sit at 6.6× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.