ZIP code 81253

ZIP 81253 is a very small community in Custer County, Colorado, with 516 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #392 of 528 ranked by population — larger than 25% of them. The median age here is 61.7 years against 39.1 nationally, a markedly older profile that usually tracks retirees staying put and younger households leaving for work. 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 ZIP 81253 earn a median of $73,061 a year, 7% 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 12.8% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 81253 is valued at $288,600, 4.9% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 89.3% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, an owner-dominated market where rental listings are scarce and rent medians rest on a thin sample. 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 61.7 puts ZIP 81253 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. With 516 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 81253 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 81253 because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.

ZIP 81253 is tabulated inside Custer County, Colorado, one of 2 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 528 across Colorado. Fewer than 2,500 people are counted here, so the ZIP behaves like a village delivery route rather than a neighbourhood. 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 81253 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 81253 reports a median household income of $73,061, close to the $71,943 county median, and 10% below the $80,917 typical CO ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $288,600, 11% below the county figure and 33% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Colorado charges 2.9% statewide, and local governments overlapping 81253 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 81253 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.