ZIP code 28521

ZIP 28521 is a small town in Duplin County, North Carolina, with 1,554 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #638 of 853 ranked by population — larger than 25% of them. The median age here is 46.4 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 28521 earn a median of $50,437 a year, 35.8% below 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 16% of residents here, above the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 28521 is valued at $106,300, 65% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 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. 92% 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.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 28521 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 28521 is tabulated inside Duplin County, North Carolina, one of 12 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 28521 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 28521 reports a median household income of $50,437, close to the $50,444 county median, and 19% below the $62,646 typical NC ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $106,300, 5% below the county figure and 48% 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.

North Carolina charges 4.75% statewide, and local governments overlapping 28521 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 28521 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.