ZIP code 12197

ZIP 12197 is a small town in Otsego County, New York, with 2,275 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #994 of 1,824 ranked by population — larger than 45% of them. The median age here is 45.5 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 12197 earn a median of $78,750 a year, essentially level with the national figure of $78,538. Median household income counts every pre-tax dollar arriving at an address — wages, self-employment, Social Security, pensions, interest and public assistance — for everyone living there, so multi-earner households pull the figure up even where individual pay is modest. Poverty reaches 18.3% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 12197 is valued at $163,300, 46.2% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $783 a month, 44.3% below the national figure, or roughly $9,396 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 11.9% 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 2.1×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so purchase prices are unusually low against local pay, the pattern in places where supply is plentiful and wage growth has been flat. 95.3% 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. Rent is reported gross — contract rent plus tenant-paid utilities — which is why it runs above the advertised price on a listing for the same unit.

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.

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 12197 is tabulated inside Otsego County, New York, one of 35 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 1,826 across New York. 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 12197 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 12197 reports a median household income of $78,750, 15% above the $68,182 county median, and close to the $79,429 typical NY ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $163,300, close to the county figure and 30% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $783 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

New York charges 4% statewide, and local governments overlapping 12197 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 12197 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.