Bear Lake CDP, MI population, income and ZIP codes

Bear Lake CDP is a very small community in Michigan, with 245 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #657 of 745 ranked by population — larger than 11% of them. The median age here is 70.1 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 Bear Lake CDP earn a median of $53,750 a year, 31.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 13% below the $61,715 median for the 438 Michigan 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 9.8% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Bear Lake CDP is valued at $143,100, 52.8% below the national figure and 14% below the $166,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 93.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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 70.1 puts Bear Lake CDP 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. With 245 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Bear Lake CDP against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for Bear Lake CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.