West Liberty, WV population, income and ZIP codes

West Liberty town is a small town in West Virginia, with 1,568 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #96 of 439 ranked by population — larger than 78% of them. The median age here is 20.5 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 West Liberty town earn a median of $43,333 a year, 44.8% below the national figure of $78,538 and 18% below the $52,974 median for the 148 West Virginia cities we cover. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 39.1% 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 West Liberty town is valued at $120,000, 60.4% below the national figure and 6% below the $127,200 peer median, while median gross rent runs $1,750 a month, 24.5% above the national figure, or roughly $21,000 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 48.5% 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 2.8×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 49.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

West Liberty town is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 48.5% of median income while homes cost only 2.8× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price. A median age of 20.5 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

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.