ZIP code 72204

ZIP 72204 is a small city in Pulaski County, Arkansas, with 31,219 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #20 of 614 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 36.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. 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 72204 earn a median of $39,088 a year, 50.2% 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 27.1% 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 ZIP 72204 is valued at $117,600, 61.2% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,016 a month, 27.7% below the national figure, or roughly $12,192 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 31.2% 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 3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 54% 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.

ZIP 72204 is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 31.2% of median income while homes cost only 3× 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 72204 is tabulated inside Pulaski County, Arkansas, one of 26 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 614 across Arkansas. This is a dense urban ZIP, where a single postal boundary can hold more residents than an entire rural county. 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 72204 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 72204 reports a median household income of $39,088, 43% below the $68,910 county median, and 26% below the $52,862 typical AR ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $117,600, 47% below the county figure and close to the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,016 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

A taxable purchase made inside 72204 carries 8.625% at the register, assembled from the Little Rock jurisdiction stack: the Arkansas state rate plus every county, municipal and special district levy that reaches this address. Because those district boundaries were drawn for schools, transit and hospital funding rather than for mail delivery, two addresses inside 72204 can legitimately fall under different totals — the rate shown here is the one that applies to the dominant jurisdiction.

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 72204 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.