ZIP code 31544

ZIP 31544 is a very small community in Telfair County, Georgia, with 482 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #677 of 751 ranked by population — larger than 9% of them. The median age here is 46.7 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 31544 earn a median of $41,333 a year, 47.4% 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 23.8% 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 31544 is valued at $69,000, 77.3% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $953 a month, 32.2% below the national figure, or roughly $11,436 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 27.7% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.7×, 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. 81.5% 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.

With 482 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 31544 against its county rather than against national figures.

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 31544 is tabulated inside Telfair County, Georgia, one of 6 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 751 across Georgia. This is one of the smallest tabulated ZIP areas in the state, the kind of rural route where a single subdivision or farm cluster accounts for most addresses. 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 31544 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 31544 reports a median household income of $41,333, 13% below the $47,265 county median, and 33% below the $61,524 typical GA ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $69,000, close to the county figure and 64% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $953 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Georgia charges 4% statewide, and local governments overlapping 31544 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 31544 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.