This is a small community in a single neighborhood.
As throughout the site, some neighborhood-level data are reserved for subscribers.
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.
Nilwood is a tiny town located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 200 people and just one neighborhood, Nilwood is the 787th largest community in Illinois. Nilwood has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Nilwood is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Nilwood is a town of professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Nilwood who work in sales jobs (14.04%), food service (12.28%), and teaching (8.77%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 7.69% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Nilwood’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
It is a fairly quiet town 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!) Nilwood 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. Nilwood has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Nilwood than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Nilwood may be for you.
Nilwood is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
In Nilwood, just 6.40% of people over 25 hold a college degree, which is very low compared to the rest of the nation, whereas the average among all cities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Nilwood in 2022 was $24,624, which is low income relative to Illinois, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $98,496 for a family of four. However, Nilwood contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Nilwood home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Nilwood residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Nilwood include German, English, European, Irish, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Nilwood is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Polish.
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.
People
NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that the neighborhood has a greater concentration of residents currently enrolled in college than 97.1% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. With 15.6% of the population here attending college, this is very much a college-focused neighborhood.
In addition, if you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 8.0% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in Illinois, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in Illinois.
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 17 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 95.5% of America.
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, 35.5% of this neighborhood's residents have German ancestry.
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 Nilwood are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 70.2% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 4.1% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 67.7% of America'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, 44.8% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 20.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.0%), and 15.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.3% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Spanish and Polish.
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 Nilwood, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (35.5%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (16.5%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.6%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (5.8%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (2.3%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (41.7% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (73.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (10.1%) . 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.
