ZIP code 46531

ZIP 46531 is a small town in Starke County, Indiana, with 1,818 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #476 of 807 ranked by population — larger than 41% of them. The median age here is 46.2 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 46531 earn a median of $56,278 a year, 28.3% 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 21.1% 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 46531 is valued at $150,900, 50.3% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 2.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 93.9% 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 46531 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 46531 is tabulated inside Starke County, Indiana, one of 5 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 807 across Indiana. 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 46531 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 46531 reports a median household income of $56,278, 15% below the $65,917 county median, and 18% below the $68,990 typical IN ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $150,900, close to the county figure and 10% 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.

Indiana charges 7% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 46531.

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 46531 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.