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.
La Mesa is a tiny town located in the state of New Mexico. With a population of 649 people and just one neighborhood, La Mesa is the 129th largest community in New Mexico.
Occupations and Workforce
La Mesa is a blue-collar town, with 35.34% of people working in blue-collar occupations, while the average in America is just 27.7%. Overall, La Mesa is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in La Mesa who work in sales jobs (17.29%), healthcare suport services (9.77%), and business and financial occupations (9.77%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, La Mesa is worth considering.
As is often the case in a small town, La Mesa doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of La Mesa has a very low overall level of education: only 6.08% of people over 25 hold a 4-year college degree or higher.
The per capita income in La Mesa in 2022 was $19,576, which is low income relative to New Mexico and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $78,304 for a family of four. However, La Mesa contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
La Mesa is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call La Mesa home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in La Mesa, accounting for 96.90% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of La Mesa residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in La Mesa include German, Italian, Scots-Irish, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
In addition, La Mesa has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (37.59%).
The most common language spoken in La Mesa is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Italian.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
Modes of Transportation
Our research reveals that 94.7% of commuters who live in the neighborhood get to work each day by driving alone in their automobiles, which is a higher proportion than 99.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
American households most often have a car, and regularly they have two or three. But households in the neighborhood buck this trend. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 46.4% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 99.3% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Real Estate
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 33.2% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 96.2% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
In addition, unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 93.1% of the neighborhoods in 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 3.6% of the workforce so employed, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of such workers than 95.2% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Mexican and French ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 85.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Mexican ancestry and 11.2% have French ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 59.9% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Spanish at home. This is a higher percentage than 95.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 La Mesa are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 74.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.2% 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, 30.9% 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 24.9% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.2%), and 16.5% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is Spanish, spoken by 59.9% of households. Some people also speak English (39.7%).
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 La Mesa, NM, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (85.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (12.0%), and residents who report French roots (11.2%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (5.8%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (1.8%), among others. In addition, 25.1% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
Getting to Work
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (54.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (94.7%) 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.
