Buffalo, MO population, income and ZIP codes

Buffalo city is a small town in Missouri, with 3,358 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #189 of 1,082 ranked by population — larger than 82% of them. The median age here is 32 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Buffalo city earn a median of $32,630 a year, 58.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 41% below the $55,543 median for the 374 Missouri 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 38.2% 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 Buffalo city is valued at $131,300, 56.7% below the national figure and 14% below the $152,400 peer median, while median gross rent runs $647 a month, 54% below the national figure, or roughly $7,764 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.8% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 39.9% 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.

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.