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.
Brentwood is a very small town located in the state of Maryland. With a population of 3,725 people and just one neighborhood, Brentwood is the 148th largest community in Maryland.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Brentwood isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Brentwood are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Brentwood is a town of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Brentwood who work in maintenance occupations (13.28%), food service (9.80%), and management occupations (8.93%).
Also of interest is that Brentwood has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 11.28% 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
One downside of living in Brentwood, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 33.99 minutes every day commuting to work. However, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
Even though Brentwood is a smaller town, it has many people who hop on public transportation – mostly the bus for their daily commute to work. Typically, these people are commuting to good jobs in the surrounding cities.
Demographics
The education level of Brentwood citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 20.98% of adults 25 and older in Brentwood have a college degree.
The per capita income in Brentwood in 2022 was $34,672, which is low income relative to Maryland, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $138,688 for a family of four. However, Brentwood contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Brentwood is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Brentwood 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 Brentwood, accounting for 53.34% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Brentwood residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Brentwood include German, Other Subsaharan African, African, Nigerian, and Irish.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Brentwood's cultural character, accounting for 39.54% of the town’s population.
The most common language spoken in Brentwood is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and French.
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.
Occupations
The government often provides some of the more stable jobs in the economy. From local, to state, to federal government workers, the government can also be a major employer. What NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed, is that the neighborhood in particular stands out when compared nationally for the proportion of its working residents who are employed by the government. At 15.7% of its workforce, this neighborhood has a greater concentration of government workers than 97.6% of U.S. neighborhoods.
People
With a nice mix of college students, safety from crime, and decent walkability, the neighborhood rates highly as a college student friendly place to live, and one that college students and their parents may want to consider. NeighborhoodScout's analysis shows that it rates more highly for a good place for college students to live than 86.5% of the neighborhoods in MD. This often also means that the area has certain amenities and services geared towards college students, from undergraduates to graduate students.
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 Brentwood are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 54.3% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.3% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.7% 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, 35.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 32.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (21.0%), and 15.7% in government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 53.1% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (42.0%).
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 Brentwood, MD, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (7.1%). There are also a number of people of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (6.3%), and residents who report South American roots (4.1%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (2.5%), along with some German ancestry residents (2.5%), among others. In addition, 34.3% 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (31.7% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (51.4%) 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 (17.7%) and 8.5% of residents also ride the bus for their daily commute. 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.
