Wachapreague, VA population, income and ZIP codes

Wachapreague town is a very small community in Virginia, with 290 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #537 of 688 ranked by population — larger than 21% of them. The median age here is 58.1 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 Wachapreague town earn a median of $56,917 a year, 27.5% below the national figure of $78,538 and 31% below the $82,986 median for the 383 Virginia 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 2.8% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Wachapreague town is valued at $206,300, 32% below the national figure and 29% below the $291,300 peer median, while median gross rent runs $2,045 a month, 45.4% above the national figure, or roughly $24,540 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 43.1% 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 3.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 83.5% 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.

Wachapreague town is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 43.1% of median income while homes cost only 3.6× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 58.1 puts Wachapreague 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.

No figure on this page is estimated by us; each one comes straight from the published ACS tables for this area. 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.