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.
Drakes Branch is a tiny town located in the state of Virginia. With a population of 518 people and just one neighborhood, Drakes Branch is the 325th largest community in Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Drakes Branch isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Drakes Branch are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Drakes Branch is a town of sales and office workers, transportation and shipping workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Drakes Branch who work in office and administrative support (26.32%), healthcare suport services (18.42%), and art, media, and design (10.53%).
Of important note, Drakes Branch is also a town of artists. Drakes Branch has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Drakes Branch’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Drakes Branch has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Drakes Branch a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
In Drakes Branch, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 34.64 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Demographics
In terms of college education, the citizens of Drakes Branch rank slightly lower than the national average. 13.53% of adults 25 and older in Drakes Branch have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree, while 21.84% of adults have a 4-year degree or higher in the average American community.
The per capita income in Drakes Branch in 2022 was $17,785, which is low income relative to Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $71,140 for a family of four.
Drakes Branch is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Drakes Branch home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Drakes Branch residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Drakes Branch include English, Italian, Irish, German, and British.
The most common language spoken in Drakes Branch is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 98.9% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
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 22 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 94.2% of America.
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 Drakes Branch are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 90.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 26.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 76.9% 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, 31.6% 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 23.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (19.2%), and 16.0% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.6% of households. Some people also speak Italian (3.5%).
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 Drakes Branch, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (8.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (5.4%), and residents who report German roots (4.8%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (3.5%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (1.4%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (30.6% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (83.9%) 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 (8.1%) . 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.
