ZIP code 51446

ZIP 51446 is a very small community in Shelby County, Iowa, with 437 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #708 of 970 ranked by population — larger than 27% of them. The median age here is 50.3 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 51446 earn a median of $61,750 a year, 21.4% below 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 18.7% 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 51446 is valued at $94,200, 69% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $700 a month, 50.2% below the national figure, or roughly $8,400 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 13.6% 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 1.5×, 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. 88.5% 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. 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 50.3 puts ZIP 51446 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 437 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 51446 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 51446 is tabulated inside Shelby County, Iowa, one of 10 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 51446 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 51446 reports a median household income of $61,750, close to the $62,754 county median, and 13% below the $71,182 typical IA ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $94,200, 33% below the county figure and 38% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $700 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 51446 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 51446 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.