ZIP code 03886

ZIP 03886 is a small town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, with 1,322 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #180 of 246 ranked by population — larger than 26% of them. The median age here is 60.2 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 03886 earn a median of $77,955 a year, essentially level with 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 6.6% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 03886 is valued at $360,900, 19% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,142 a month, 18.8% below the national figure, or roughly $13,704 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 17.6% 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 4.6×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 81.1% 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.

A median age of 60.2 puts ZIP 03886 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.

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 03886 is tabulated inside Carroll County, New Hampshire, one of 29 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 246 across New Hampshire. 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 03886 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 03886 reports a median household income of $77,955, close to the $77,783 county median, and 16% below the $92,797 typical NH ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $360,900, close to the county figure and 6% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,142 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

New Hampshire charges 0% statewide, and no local sales tax is layered on top, so the state rate is the full amount collected in 03886.

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 03886 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.