Sour Lake, TX population, income and ZIP codes

Sour Lake city is a small town in Texas, with 2,162 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #712 of 1,863 ranked by population — larger than 61% of them. The median age here is 30.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 Sour Lake city earn a median of $73,190 a year, 6.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 13% above the $64,654 median for the 1,008 Texas cities we cover. Household income here is measured before tax and pooled across everyone at the address, which is why it reads higher than typical individual earnings in the same area. Poverty reaches 14.1% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Sour Lake city is valued at $161,800, 46.7% below the national figure and 10% below the $179,100 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,164 a month, 17.2% below the national figure, or roughly $13,968 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.1% 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 2.2×, 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. 64.9% 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.

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.