ZIP code 36617

ZIP 36617 is a mid-size town in Mobile County, Alabama, with 11,952 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #150 of 656 ranked by population — larger than 77% of them. The median age here is 47 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 ZIP 36617 earn a median of $39,922 a year, 49.2% below the national figure of $78,538. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 21.2% 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 ZIP 36617 is valued at $75,800, 75% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,061 a month, 24.5% below the national figure, or roughly $12,732 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 31.9% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.9×, 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. 49.2% 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.

ZIP 36617 is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 31.9% of median income while homes cost only 1.9× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

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.

ZIP 36617 is tabulated inside Mobile County, Alabama, one of 38 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 656 across Alabama. This is a mid-sized suburban ZIP inside a county that is split across many delivery areas. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 36617 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 36617 reports a median household income of $39,922, 32% below the $58,532 county median, and 28% below the $55,313 typical AL ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $75,800, 54% below the county figure and 49% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,061 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Alabama charges 4% statewide, and local governments overlapping 36617 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 36617 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.