War, WV population, income and ZIP codes

War city is a very small community in West Virginia, with 593 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #207 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 52% of them. The median age here is 33.6 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 War city earn a median of $20,852 a year, 73.4% below the national figure of $78,538 and 61% below the $52,974 median for the 148 West 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 39% 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 War city is valued at $28,800, 90.5% below the national figure and 77% below the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $722 a month, 48.6% below the national figure, or roughly $8,664 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 41.5% 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 1.4×, 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. 57.3% 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.

War city is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 41.5% of median income while homes cost only 1.4× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. With 593 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare War city against its county rather than against national figures.

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.