Sparta, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Sparta town is a small town in North Carolina, with 1,957 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #344 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 55% of them. The median age here is 44.9 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 Sparta town earn a median of $38,542 a year, 50.9% below the national figure of $78,538 and 37% below 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 21.2% 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 Sparta town is valued at $215,800, 28.9% below the national figure and within a couple of points of the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $583 a month, 58.5% below the national figure, or roughly $6,996 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.2% 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 5.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 57.4% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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.