ZIP code 38109

ZIP 38109 is a small city in Shelby County, Tennessee, with 43,764 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #26 of 638 ranked by population — larger than 96% of them. The median age here is 38.5 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 38109 earn a median of $36,934 a year, 53% below 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 31.6% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 38109 is valued at $76,600, 74.8% below the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,000 a month, 28.9% below the national figure, or roughly $12,000 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 32.5% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is a stretch on median earnings. 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. 54.4% 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.

ZIP 38109 is the unusual combination of expensive to rent and cheap to buy: rent takes 32.5% of median income while homes cost only 2.1× it. Where that pattern shows up, the gap is normally down to down-payment and credit barriers rather than price.

Every value on this page is published directly by the Census for this area — nothing is modelled or interpolated. 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 38109 is tabulated inside Shelby County, Tennessee, one of 38 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 38109 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 38109 reports a median household income of $36,934, 36% below the $57,500 county median, and 38% below the $59,143 typical TN ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $76,600, 60% below the county figure and 61% below the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,000 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Tennessee charges 7% statewide, and local governments overlapping 38109 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 38109 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.