ZIP code 28616

ZIP 28616 is a very small community in Avery County, North Carolina, with 129 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #797 of 853 ranked by population — larger than 6% of them. The median age here is 19.1 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 28616 earn a median of $107,292 a year, 36.6% above the national figure of $78,538. This figure covers the household, not the worker: two people on ordinary wages at one address outrank a single professional in the same table. Poverty reaches 0% of residents here, less than half the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 28616 is valued at $222,500, 26.7% 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. 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. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 19.1 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. With 129 residents, a handful of survey responses moves every median on this page. Compare ZIP 28616 against its county rather than against national figures.

The Census withheld gross rent for ZIP 28616 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 28616 is tabulated inside Avery County, North Carolina, one of 8 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 853 across North Carolina. 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 28616 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 28616 reports a median household income of $107,292, 65% above the $65,120 county median, and 71% above the $62,646 typical NC ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $222,500, close to the county figure and 10% 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 28616 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 28616 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.