Polk ZIP codes — Polk County, North Carolina

Polk County is a mid-size town in North Carolina, with 19,689 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates. The median age here is 54.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in Polk County earn a median of $61,005 a year, 22.3% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 13.7% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in Polk County is valued at $281,100, 7.4% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,089 a month, 22.5% below the national figure, or roughly $13,068 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 21.4% 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 4.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 76.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 54.4 puts Polk County 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.