ZIP code 27609

ZIP 27609 is a small city in Wake County, North Carolina, with 35,548 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #98 of 853 ranked by population — larger than 88% of them. The median age here is 38.4 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly younger profile than the country as a whole. Places under 65,000 residents only appear in the five-year release, never the one-year file, so these values pool sixty months of responses and lag the current year by design.

Households in ZIP 27609 earn a median of $81,538 a year, 3.8% above 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 6.5% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 27609 is valued at $441,100, 45.4% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,393 a month, essentially level with the national figure, or roughly $16,716 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 20.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 5.4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 51.1% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. Gross rent folds in the utilities a tenant pays separately, so it is closer to the real monthly outlay than a headline rent figure.

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 27609 is tabulated inside Wake County, North Carolina, one of 32 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 853 across North Carolina. This is a dense urban ZIP, where a single postal boundary can hold more residents than an entire rural county. 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 27609 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 27609 reports a median household income of $81,538, 18% below the $99,819 county median, and 30% above the $62,646 typical NC ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $441,100, close to the county figure and 117% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,393 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

A taxable purchase made inside 27609 carries 7.25% at the register, assembled from the Raleigh jurisdiction stack: the North Carolina state rate plus every county, municipal and special district levy that reaches this address. Because those district boundaries were drawn for schools, transit and hospital funding rather than for mail delivery, two addresses inside 27609 can legitimately fall under different totals — the rate shown here is the one that applies to the dominant jurisdiction.

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 27609 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.