ZIP code 42261

ZIP 42261 is a mid-size town in Butler County, Kentucky, with 9,725 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #133 of 779 ranked by population — larger than 83% of them. The median age here is 40.3 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older profile than the country as a whole. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in ZIP 42261 earn a median of $49,219 a year, 37.3% 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 19.3% 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 42261 is valued at $106,700, 64.8% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $643 a month, 54.3% below the national figure, or roughly $7,716 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 15.7% 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 2.2×, 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. 69.4% 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.

All values below were released by the Census for this exact geography, with no gap-filling on our side. 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 42261 is tabulated inside Butler County, Kentucky, one of 4 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 779 across Kentucky. Population sits in the small-town band, typically one main street plus the addresses that feed into it. 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 42261 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 42261 reports a median household income of $49,219, close to the $49,219 county median, and 9% below the $53,906 typical KY ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $106,700, 29% below the county figure and 18% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $643 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Kentucky charges 6% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 42261.

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 42261 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.