ZIP code 87523

ZIP 87523 is a very small community in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, with 418 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #241 of 372 ranked by population — larger than 35% of them. The median age here is 15.8 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. 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 87523 earn a median of $23,426 a year, 70.2% 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 65.1% 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 87523 is valued at $150,000, 50.6% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 6.4×, 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 6.4× 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 15.8 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 87523 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 87523 is tabulated inside Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, one of 30 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 372 across New Mexico. 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 87523 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 87523 reports a median household income of $23,426, 60% below the $58,125 county median, and 56% below the $53,479 typical NM ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $150,000, 42% below the county figure and 16% below 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.

New Mexico charges 4.875% statewide, and local governments overlapping 87523 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 87523 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.