Houghton Lake, MI population, income and ZIP codes

Houghton Lake CDP is a mid-size town in Michigan, with 5,761 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #164 of 745 ranked by population — larger than 78% of them. The median age here is 54.5 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Houghton Lake CDP earn a median of $50,861 a year, 35.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 18% 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 21.7% 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 Houghton Lake CDP is valued at $122,800, 59.5% below the national figure and 26% below the $166,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $791 a month, 43.7% below the national figure, or roughly $9,492 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.7% 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 2.4×, 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. 79.5% 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.

A median age of 54.5 puts Houghton 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.

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.