ZIP code 21677

ZIP 21677 is a very small community in Dorchester County, Maryland, with 534 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #388 of 477 ranked by population — larger than 18% of them. The median age here is 55 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 21677 earn a median of $112,578 a year, 43.3% 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 33.4% 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 21677 is valued at $439,300, 44.8% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 3.9×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 86.7% 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. 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 55 puts ZIP 21677 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. Median income runs above the national figure while poverty also runs above it — a split distribution, not a uniformly comfortable place. Averages hide that; the two numbers together do not.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 21677 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 21677 is tabulated inside Dorchester County, Maryland, one of 16 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 477 across Maryland. Fewer than 2,500 people are counted here, so the ZIP behaves like a village delivery route rather than a neighbourhood. 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 21677 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 21677 reports a median household income of $112,578, 64% above the $68,611 county median, and 8% above the $104,338 typical MD ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $439,300, 77% above the county figure and 10% 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 21677.

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 21677 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.