ZIP code 27936

ZIP 27936 is a very small community in Dare County, North Carolina, with 613 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #723 of 853 ranked by population — larger than 15% of them. The median age here is 54.2 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 27936 earn a median of $43,162 a year, 45% 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 14.8% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 27936 is valued at $430,100, 41.8% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 10×, 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. 95.4% 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.

Home values sit at 10× 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 54.2 puts ZIP 27936 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 27936 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 27936 is tabulated inside Dare County, North Carolina, one of 14 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 853 across North Carolina. 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 27936 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 27936 reports a median household income of $43,162, 34% below the $65,730 county median, and 31% below the $62,646 typical NC ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $430,100, 13% above the county figure and 112% 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.

North Carolina charges 4.75% statewide, and local governments overlapping 27936 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 27936 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.