ZIP code 37421

ZIP 37421 is a small city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, with 52,516 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #19 of 638 ranked by population — larger than 97% of them. The median age here is 41.1 years against 39.1 nationally, a slightly older 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 37421 earn a median of $79,958 a year, 1.8% above 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 8.7% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 37421 is valued at $299,600, 1.3% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,313 a month, 6.6% below the national figure, or roughly $15,756 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 19.7% 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 3.7×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is easier here than in the average US market. 60.6% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, so the market leans more heavily on renters. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

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 37421 is tabulated inside Hamilton County, Tennessee, one of 26 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 638 across Tennessee. 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 37421 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 37421 reports a median household income of $79,958, 20% above the $66,389 county median, and 35% above the $59,143 typical TN ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $299,600, 14% above the county figure and 54% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,313 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

A taxable purchase made inside 37421 carries 9.25% at the register, assembled from the Chattanooga jurisdiction stack: the Tennessee 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 37421 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 37421 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.