ZIP code 53203

ZIP 53203 is a small town in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, with 2,077 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #471 of 783 ranked by population — larger than 39% of them. The median age here is 31.7 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 53203 earn a median of $84,005 a year, 7% 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 9.1% of residents here, below the 12.4% national rate.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 53203 is valued at $334,600, 10.3% above the national figure, while median gross rent runs $1,671 a month, 18.8% above the national figure, or roughly $20,052 across a full year. A household on the local median income would put about 23.9% of gross pay toward that rent against the federal 30% cost-burden threshold, so renting here is within the standard affordability guideline. The home-price-to-income ratio works out to 4×, against roughly 3.9× nationally, so buying is harder here than in the average US market. 13.9% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. 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 53203 is tabulated inside Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, one of 36 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 783 across Wisconsin. 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 53203 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 53203 reports a median household income of $84,005, 23% above the $68,482 county median, and 14% above the $73,420 typical WI ZIP. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of $334,600, 64% above the county figure and 56% above the statewide ZIP median. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at $1,671 a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

A taxable purchase made inside 53203 carries 7.9% at the register, assembled from the Milwaukee jurisdiction stack: the Wisconsin 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 53203 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 53203 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.