McAllen, TX population, income and ZIP codes

McAllen city is a mid-size city in Texas, with 143,789 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #23 of 1,863 ranked by population — larger than 98% of them. The median age here is 34 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. At this size the Census also publishes one-year estimates; the five-year values used here are steadier and let you compare against smaller neighbours on the same basis.

Households in McAllen city earn a median of $60,165 a year, 23.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 7% below the $64,654 median for the 1,008 Texas 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 20.2% 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 McAllen city is valued at $173,800, 42.7% below the national figure and 3% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,017 a month, 27.7% below the national figure, or roughly $12,204 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.3% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. 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. 59% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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.