Oak Island, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Oak Island town is a mid-size town in North Carolina, with 8,888 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #109 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 86% of them. The median age here is 61.5 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 Oak Island town earn a median of $83,483 a year, 6.3% above the national figure of $78,538 and 36% above the $61,228 median for the 459 North Carolina 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 9.7% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Oak Island town is valued at $407,400, 34.3% above the national figure and 85% above the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,208 a month, 14.1% below the national figure, or roughly $14,496 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.4% 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 4.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 87.8% 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 61.5 puts Oak Island town well into retirement-weighted territory, which pulls median household income down even where household wealth is high, because retirement draws are counted differently from wages.

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.