ZIP code 52543

ZIP 52543 is a very small community in Mahaska County, Iowa, with 486 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #681 of 970 ranked by population — larger than 29% of them. The median age here is 30.6 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 52543 earn a median of $80,145 a year, 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 0% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 52543 is valued at $107,300, 64.6% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 1.3×, 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. 77% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans toward owners. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

With 486 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 52543 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 52543 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 52543 is tabulated inside Mahaska County, Iowa, one of 9 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 52543 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 52543 reports a median household income of $80,145, 25% above the $64,018 county median, and 13% above the $71,182 typical IA ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $107,300, close to the county figure and 29% 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 52543 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 52543 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.