Cortland, NY population, income and ZIP codes

Cortland city is a mid-size town in New York, with 17,465 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #109 of 1,292 ranked by population — larger than 91% of them. The median age here is 27.2 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 Cortland city earn a median of $55,368 a year, 29.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 40% below the $91,806 median for the 847 New York 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 22% 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 Cortland city is valued at $143,800, 52.6% below the national figure and 54% below the $315,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $893 a month, 36.5% below the national figure, or roughly $10,716 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.4% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is cheap relative to what people here earn. 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. 44.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

A median age of 27.2 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.

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.