Sapphire Ridge, MT population, income and ZIP codes

Sapphire Ridge CDP is a very small community in Montana, with 17 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #450 of 497 ranked by population — larger than 9% of them. The median age here is 69.2 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 Sapphire Ridge CDP earn a median of $17,500 a year, 77.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 72% below the $62,992 median for the 94 Montana 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 47.1% 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 Sapphire Ridge CDP is valued at $191,700, 36.8% below the national figure and 24% below the $250,900 peer median, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 11×, 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. 100% 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.

Home values sit at 11× 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. A median age of 69.2 puts Sapphire Ridge 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for Sapphire Ridge 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.