ZIP code 51244

ZIP 51244 is a very small community in Sioux County, Iowa, with 140 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #886 of 970 ranked by population — larger than 8% of them. The median age here is 57.9 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 51244 earn a median of $81,771 a year, 4.1% above the national figure of $78,538. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 1.4% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 51244 is valued at $89,700, 70.4% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.1×, 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. 96.7% 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. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

A median age of 57.9 puts ZIP 51244 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 140 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 51244 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 51244 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 51244 is tabulated inside Sioux County, Iowa, one of 13 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 970 across Iowa. 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 51244 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 51244 reports a median household income of $81,771, close to the $82,353 county median, and 15% above the $71,182 typical IA ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $89,700, 60% below the county figure and 41% 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.

Iowa charges 6% statewide, and local governments overlapping 51244 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 51244 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.