Cullowhee, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Cullowhee CDP is a mid-size town in North Carolina, with 7,300 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #129 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 83% of them. The median age here is 20.9 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 Cullowhee CDP earn a median of $35,076 a year, 55.3% below the national figure of $78,538 and 43% below the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina 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 51.3% 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 Cullowhee CDP is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs $836 a month, 40.5% below the national figure, or roughly $10,032 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 28.6% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. 7.7% 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 20.9 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.

The Census withheld home value for Cullowhee CDP because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.