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.
North Brookfield is a very small town located in the state of Massachusetts. With a population of 4,724 people and just one neighborhood, North Brookfield is the 260th largest community in Massachusetts. North Brookfield 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
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, North Brookfield is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, North Brookfield is a town of professionals, production and manufacturing workers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in North Brookfield who work in management occupations (11.08%), office and administrative support (8.21%), and teaching (7.75%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 9.13% 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
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!) North Brookfield 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 Brookfield has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in North Brookfield than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, North Brookfield may be for you.
One downside of living in North Brookfield is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In North Brookfield, the average commute to work is 36.62 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, North Brookfield doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The percentage of people in North Brookfield who are college-educated is somewhat higher than the average US community of 21.84%: 26.49% of adults in North Brookfield have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in North Brookfield in 2022 was $45,296, which is lower middle income relative to Massachusetts, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $181,184 for a family of four. However, North Brookfield contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call North Brookfield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of North Brookfield residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in North Brookfield include French, Irish, Italian, English, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in North Brookfield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and German/Yiddish.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in North Brookfield, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French and French Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 19.7% of this neighborhood's residents have French ancestry and 8.0% have French Canadian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 9.4% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.9% of the neighborhoods in America.
The Neighbors
There are two complementary measures for understanding the income of a neighborhood's residents: the average and the extremes. While a neighborhood may be relatively wealthy overall, it is equally important to understand the rate of people - particularly children - who are living at or below the federal poverty line, which is extremely low income. Some neighborhoods with a lower average income may actually have a lower childhood poverty rate than another with a higher average income, and this helps us understand the conditions and character of a neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in North Brookfield are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 56.5% of the neighborhoods in America. With 29.7% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 81.4% of U.S. neighborhoods.
A neighborhood is far different if it is dominated by enlisted military personnel rather than people who earn their living by farming. It is also different if most of the neighbors are clerical support or managers. What is wonderful is the sheer diversity of neighborhoods, allowing you to find the type that fits your lifestyle and aspirations.
In the neighborhood, 39.0% 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 30.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.9%), and 11.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.1% of households. Some people also speak Polish (9.4%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in North Brookfield, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as French (19.7%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (14.1%), and residents who report Italian roots (10.5%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (9.3%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (8.8%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (38.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (85.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
