ZIP code 21653

ZIP 21653 is a very small community in Talbot County, Maryland, with 132 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #439 of 477 ranked by population — larger than 7% of them. The median age here is 67.8 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 21653 earn a median of $100,917 a year, 28.5% above 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 8.3% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 21653 is valued at $531,300, 75.1% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.3×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 100% 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 67.8 puts ZIP 21653 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 132 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 21653 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 21653 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 21653 is tabulated inside Talbot County, Maryland, one of 15 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 477 across Maryland. 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 21653 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 21653 reports a median household income of $100,917, close to the $100,917 county median, and 3% below the $104,338 typical MD ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $531,300, close to the county figure and 32% above 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.

Maryland charges 6% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 21653.

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 21653 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.