Buffalo ZIP codes — Buffalo County, South Dakota

Buffalo County is a small town in South Dakota, with 1,757 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates. The median age here is 26.2 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 Buffalo County earn a median of $47,000 a year, 40.2% below the national figure of $78,538. 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 32.5% 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 Buffalo County is valued at $108,000, 64.4% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $535 a month, 61.9% below the national figure, or roughly $6,420 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 13.7% 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 2.3×, 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. 52.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

A median age of 26.2 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.

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.