Mills River, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Mills River town is a mid-size town in North Carolina, with 7,214 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #130 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 83% of them. The median age here is 46.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Mills River town earn a median of $88,359 a year, 12.5% above the national figure of $78,538 and 44% above the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina cities we cover. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 2% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Mills River town is valued at $358,500, 18.2% above the national figure and 63% above the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,611 a month, 14.6% above the national figure, or roughly $19,332 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.9% 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 4.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 86% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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.

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.