Portales, NM population, income and ZIP codes

Portales city is a mid-size town in New Mexico, with 12,023 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #20 of 527 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 27.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Portales city earn a median of $51,290 a year, 34.7% below the national figure of $78,538 and 5% below the $54,029 median for the 153 New Mexico cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 21.5% 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 Portales city is valued at $132,900, 56.2% below the national figure and 30% below the $190,000 peer median, while median gross rent runs $870 a month, 38.1% below the national figure, or roughly $10,440 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.4% 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 2.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 53% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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 27.7 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.