ZIP code 81521

ZIP 81521 is a mid-size town in Mesa County, Colorado, with 16,861 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #137 of 528 ranked by population — larger than 74% of them. The median age here is 42.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older 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 81521 earn a median of $82,632 a year, 5.2% above 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 3.3% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 81521 is valued at $385,300, 27% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,249 a month, 11.2% below the national figure, or roughly $14,988 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 18.1% 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 4.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 83.2% 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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.

ZIP 81521 is tabulated inside Mesa County, Colorado, one of 17 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 528 across Colorado. 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 81521 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 81521 reports a median household income of $82,632, close to the $83,353 county median, and close to the $80,917 typical CO ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $385,300, 12% below the county figure and 10% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,249 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 81521 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 81521 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.