ZIP code 38862

ZIP 38862 is a small town in Lee County, Mississippi, with 2,000 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #259 of 427 ranked by population — larger than 39% of them. The median age here is 47 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 38862 earn a median of $51,688 a year, 34.2% 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 23.2% 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 38862 is valued at $136,900, 54.9% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $841 a month, 40.2% below the national figure, or roughly $10,092 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.5% 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 2.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 69.7% 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.

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 38862 is tabulated inside Lee County, Mississippi, one of 8 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 427 across Mississippi. 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 38862 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 38862 reports a median household income of $51,688, 19% below the $63,837 county median, and 5% above the $49,375 typical MS ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $136,900, 17% below the county figure and 20% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $841 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Mississippi charges 7% statewide, and local governments overlapping 38862 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 38862 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.