This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
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What do we mean by a neighborhood?
NeighborhoodScout® uses the official government designation for neighborhoods - the census tract.
Census tracts are small, relatively permanent subdivisions of a county that are defined by the U.S. Census Bureau in conjunction with local authorities all across the country to define real neighborhoods that are bounded to contain areas with homogeneous population characteristics (including economic status, lifestyle, and living conditions). Census tracts usually have 4,000 persons, but can range between 1,500 and 8,000 persons. This is the most fine-grained area for which detailed information is made available from the government, to protect the individual privacy of each of us. Because census tracts are based on population, they vary in size depending on the density of settlement. In urban areas, they are small, and in rural areas they can cover an entire small town or even a few small towns in very rural areas.
Since census tracts are subdivisions of a county, we did a spatial overlay of the census tracts onto city and town boundaries using a geographic information system to properly assign each census tract to its appropriate city or town. Then we named each census tract to the local colloquially recognized neighborhood name for that spot (e.g., Boston, MA (Dorchester). If there was not a name available, we named the census tract by the largest street intersection in the census tract (e.g., Worcester, MA (Lincoln St/Plantation St)
Why we don't use Zip Codes as neighborhoods
Zip codes were developed by the Postal Service for the purpose of delivering mail, but were never intended to define coherent neighborhoods. In addition, Zip Codes can have as many as 10 distinctly different census tracts contained within them. When distinct census tracts are blended together in a single Zip Code, the data reflects their average conditions and often gives a false sense of the area. The result is that potentially great matching neighborhoods can be missed, and erroneous matches can also be produced and delivered to you.
Using census tracts makes great matches possible, and helps people find the areas that are best for them and their families. Because we are committed to providing the highest possible quality and finding the neighborhoods that best meet your criteria, we use census tracts. And, as always, we show you the actual street map of the neighborhood so you know exactly where your best matching neighborhood is located.
What is a Condition Alert?
A condition alert is a condition in the neighborhood that triggers an alert. NeighborhoodScout contains condition alerts to highlight conditions that are extreme, whether good or bad. This helps answer crucial questions about the state of the neighborhood being evaluated, such as:
What are the risks of violent crime here?
Is the risk of home break-ins or other property crimes increasing?
Does real estate here hold its value?
Are the trends in local vacancies or unemployment concerning?
...and dozens more.
Information at a glance that you need to know to invest, appraise or finance a property.
North Buena Vista is a tiny city located in the state of Iowa. With a population of 108 people and just one neighborhood, North Buena Vista is the 447th largest community in Iowa.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, North Buena Vista is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 60.00% of the North Buena Vista workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, North Buena Vista is a city of transportation and shipping workers, construction workers and builders, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in North Buena Vista who work in healthcare (12.50%), office and administrative support (10.00%), and personal care services (5.00%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Another notable thing is that North Buena Vista is an extremely popular vacation destination. A significant portion of the population is seasonal. During the vacation season, the city experiences a large influx of people who take up residence in second homes they own in the area. As the vacation season ends, the population drops again, leaving behind a substantially quieter and smaller city.
North Buena Vista’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
It is a fairly quiet city because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) North Buena Vista has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. North Buena Vista has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in North Buena Vista than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, North Buena Vista may be for you.
One downside of living in North Buena Vista, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 34.47 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small city, North Buena Vista doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The rate of college-level education in North Buena Vista is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.34% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in North Buena Vista in 2022 was $27,424, which is low income relative to Iowa, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $109,696 for a family of four. However, North Buena Vista contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call North Buena Vista home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of North Buena Vista residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in North Buena Vista include German, English, Scottish, Austrian, and Czech.
The most common language spoken in North Buena Vista is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and African languages.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 13 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 96.3% of America.
Occupations
It used to be that most Americans lived on the farm, or otherwise made their living from the land, the forests, or the sea. With global trade and an economy increasingly based on providing services to one another, fewer people farm, fish or harvest timber now than at any time in American history. But according to NeighborhoodScout's leading analysis, the neighborhood stands apart from most American neighborhood due to the proportion of its residents still working in these fields. With 3.7% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 95.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
People
The neighborhood is a great option for families, as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's research on this neighborhood. The combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes, make this neighborhood among the top 8.3% of family-friendly neighborhoods in the state of Iowa. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a sense of community. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 37.2% of this neighborhood's residents have German ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 7.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.5% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in North Buena Vista are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 62.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 15.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 61.1% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 41.4% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 24.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.4%), and 10.4% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 90.3% of households. Some people also speak German/Yiddish (7.8%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in North Buena Vista, IA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (37.2%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.2%), and some of the residents are also of Norwegian ancestry (1.6%), along with some French ancestry residents (1.1%), among others.
Getting to Work
How you get to work – car, bus, train or other means – and how much of your day it takes to do so is a large quality of life and financial issue. Especially with gasoline prices rising and expected to continue doing so, the length and means of one's commute can be a financial burden. Some neighborhoods are physically located so that many residents have to drive in their own car, others are set up so many walk to work, or can take a train, bus, or bike. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (68.5%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors to get to work (18.5%) . In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.
SCOUT’s patented match algorithm identifies the most similar neighborhoods to a subject location, and quantifies the similarity to the subject location. This allows analysts to identify the most similar neighborhoods in a local market area for appraisals, investments, and research.
The algorithm uses 273 neighborhood conditions, identifies the dominant dimensions underlying the conditions and calculates the similarity. This captures the true culture and character of locations, economic conditions, and trends.
The closer to 100% means the locations are nearly identical. 80% is a very good, but not excellent match, and so forth.
