ZIP code 59856

ZIP 59856 is a very small community in Sanders County, Montana, with 138 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #298 of 369 ranked by population — larger than 19% of them. The median age here is 72.1 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 59856 earn a median of $47,500 a year, 39.5% below 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 14.5% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 59856 is valued at $500,000, 64.8% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 10.5×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is out of reach on local earnings alone and the ownership market leans on outside income, equity or dual high earners. 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. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

Home values sit at 10.5× median household income, far past the 3.9× national mark, so ownership costs here are set by something other than local wages — second homes, retirees with equity, or commuters earning elsewhere. A median age of 72.1 puts ZIP 59856 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 59856 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 59856 is tabulated inside Sanders County, Montana, one of 9 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 369 across Montana. 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 59856 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 59856 reports a median household income of $47,500, 3% below the $48,840 county median, and 26% below the $64,375 typical MT ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $500,000, 24% above the county figure and 86% 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.

Montana charges 0% statewide, and local governments overlapping 59856 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 59856 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.