Gaston, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Gaston town is a very small community in North Carolina, with 864 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #484 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 37% of them. The median age here is 39.4 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 Gaston town earn a median of $41,250 a year, 47.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 33% 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 22.6% 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 Gaston town is valued at $76,300, 74.9% below the national figure and 65% below the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $688 a month, 51.1% below the national figure, or roughly $8,256 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20% 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 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. 41.8% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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.

With 864 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Gaston town against its county rather than against national figures.

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.