Southern Shops, SC population, income and ZIP codes

Southern Shops CDP is a small town in South Carolina, with 3,985 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #120 of 475 ranked by population — larger than 74% of them. The median age here is 34.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger 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 Southern Shops CDP earn a median of $35,016 a year, 55.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 34% below the $53,071 median for the 263 South 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 44.2% 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 Southern Shops CDP is valued at $102,200, 66.3% below the national figure and 42% below the $177,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $963 a month, 31.5% below the national figure, or roughly $11,556 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 33% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 49.2% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. 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.

Southern Shops CDP is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 33% of median income while homes cost only 2.9× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

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.