Balmorhea, TX population, income and ZIP codes

Balmorhea city is a very small community in Texas, with 505 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #1262 of 1,863 ranked by population — larger than 32% of them. The median age here is 41.8 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 Balmorhea city earn a median of $29,375 a year, 62.6% below the national figure of $78,538 and 55% below the $64,654 median for the 1,008 Texas 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 39.8% 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 Balmorhea city is valued at $56,700, 81.3% below the national figure and 68% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,088 a month, 22.6% below the national figure, or roughly $13,056 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 44.4% 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 1.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 71.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Balmorhea city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 44.4% of median income while homes cost only 1.9× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. With 505 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare Balmorhea city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.