Elephant Butte, NM population, income and ZIP codes

Elephant Butte city is a small town in New Mexico, with 1,586 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #111 of 527 ranked by population — larger than 79% of them. The median age here is 66.1 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 Elephant Butte city earn a median of $45,179 a year, 42.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 16% below the $54,029 median for the 153 New Mexico 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 10% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Elephant Butte city is valued at $166,800, 45% below the national figure and 12% below the $190,000 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,169 a month, 16.9% below the national figure, or roughly $14,028 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 31% 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 3.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 86% 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.

Elephant Butte city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 31% of median income while homes cost only 3.7× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 66.1 puts Elephant Butte city 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.

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.