Bryson City, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Bryson City town is a small town in North Carolina, with 1,676 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #363 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 53% of them. The median age here is 40.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older 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 Bryson City town earn a median of $43,387 a year, 44.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 29% below the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina 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 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 Bryson City town is valued at $246,700, 18.7% below the national figure and 12% above the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $721 a month, 48.7% below the national figure, or roughly $8,652 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.9% 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 5.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 48.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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.