Ruidoso Downs, NM population, income and ZIP codes

Ruidoso Downs city is a small town in New Mexico, with 2,629 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #70 of 527 ranked by population — larger than 86% of them. The median age here is 35.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 Ruidoso Downs city earn a median of $31,413 a year, 60% below the national figure of $78,538 and 42% 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 29.1% 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 Ruidoso Downs city is valued at $55,400, 81.7% below the national figure and 71% below the $190,000 peer median, while median gross rent runs $826 a month, 41.3% below the national figure, or roughly $9,912 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 31.6% 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 1.8×, 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. 69.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

Ruidoso Downs city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 31.6% of median income while homes cost only 1.8× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

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.