Waco, NC population, income and ZIP codes

Waco town is a very small community in North Carolina, with 216 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #699 of 777 ranked by population — larger than 10% of them. The median age here is 55.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 Waco town earn a median of $31,250 a year, 60.2% below the national figure of $78,538 and 49% 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 12% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Waco town is valued at $93,100, 69.3% below the national figure and 58% below the $219,800 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,077 a month, 23.4% below the national figure, or roughly $12,924 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 41.4% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is severely stretched — a median-income renter clears the cost-burden line by a wide margin before utilities beyond the gross-rent definition. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 80% 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.

Waco town is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 41.4% of median income while homes cost only 3× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 55.3 puts Waco 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.