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.
Sandy Ridge is a very small town located in the state of North Carolina. With a population of 2,685 people and just one neighborhood, Sandy Ridge is the 267th largest community in North Carolina.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Sandy Ridge is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 49.71% of the Sandy Ridge workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Sandy Ridge is a town of transportation and shipping workers, sales and office workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Sandy Ridge who work in office and administrative support (14.69%), maintenance occupations (7.47%), and sales jobs (6.89%).
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 8.13% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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!) Sandy Ridge 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. Sandy Ridge has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Sandy Ridge than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Sandy Ridge may be for you.
One downside of living in Sandy Ridge is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Sandy Ridge, the average commute to work is 39.60 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Being a small town, Sandy Ridge does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Sandy Ridge with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 10.77% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Sandy Ridge in 2022 was $30,132, which is middle income relative to North Carolina, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $120,528 for a family of four. However, Sandy Ridge contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Sandy Ridge home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sandy Ridge residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Sandy Ridge include English, German, Scottish, Irish, and Canadian.
The most common language spoken in Sandy Ridge is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Sandy Ridge, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
Astoundingly, the neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of divorcees living here than of any neighborhood, a higher concentration than NeighborhoodScout found in 99.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. This may be because people living here divorce more often than others, or that divorced people move here after they become divorced. If you are divorced, you will be in good company in this particular Sandy Ridge neighborhood.
Occupations
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research identifies the neighborhood as having one of the highest concentrations of people employed in manufacturing or as laborers of any neighborhood in America. In fact, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs nationally, this neighborhood has 49.5% of its working residents employed in such fields, which is a higher proportion than 98.8% of American neighborhoods.
Modes of Transportation
While most Americans do drive to work alone each day, the neighborhood stands out by having 91.2% of commuters doing so, which is a higher proportion of people driving alone to work than NeighborhoodScout found in 98.2% of all American neighborhoods.
Car Ownership
Most American households own a car or other vehicle. Many own two cars or perhaps three. In the United States, it is useful to have an automobile not only for commuting, but also for shopping and getting to other services one needs. But NeighborhoodScout's analysis revealed that households in the neighborhood have a highly unusual car ownership. Residents of this neighborhood must really love automobiles. NeighborhoodScout's Analysis reveals that 37.0% of the households here have four, five, or more cars. That is more cars per household than in 97.1% of the neighborhoods in the nation.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scottish and Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Scottish ancestry and 1.1% have Canadian ancestry.
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 Sandy Ridge are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 76.6% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 15.9% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.7% 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, 49.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer 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 18.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.3%), and 15.9% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.8% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (3.2%).
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 Sandy Ridge, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (9.5%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (8.6%), and residents who report Scottish roots (6.8%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.0%), along with some Canadian ancestry residents (1.1%), among others.
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 (47.0% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (91.2%) 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.
