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.
Lavalette is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 932 people and just one neighborhood, Lavalette is the 160th largest community in West Virginia.
Lavalette real estate is some of the most expensive in West Virginia, although Lavalette house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Occupations and Workforce
Lavalette is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Lavalette is a town of professionals, construction workers and builders, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Lavalette who work in healthcare (21.60%), office and administrative support (16.00%), and food service (10.67%).
Also of interest is that Lavalette has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Lavalette is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Lavalette a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Lavalette has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Lavalette’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
One downside of living in Lavalette, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 34.94 minutes every day commuting to work.
Being a small town, Lavalette does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The citizens of Lavalette are among the most well-educated in the nation: 45.60% of adults in Lavalette have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree, whereas the average US city has 21.84% holding at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Lavalette in 2022 was $19,029, which is low income relative to West Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $76,116 for a family of four. However, Lavalette contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Lavalette home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lavalette residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Lavalette include German, Irish, English, Russian, and Yugoslavian.
The most common language spoken in Lavalette is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and African languages.
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 93.5% of commuters who live in the neighborhood get to work each day by driving alone in their automobiles, which is a higher proportion than 99.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Lavalette is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in WV, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 88.6% of the neighborhoods in West Virginia. If you are considering retiring to West Virginia, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 97.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more English ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 23.2% of this neighborhood's residents have English ancestry.
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 Lavalette are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 48.7% of the neighborhoods in America. With 17.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 64.8% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 41.0% 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 30.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.7%), and 10.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households.
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 Lavalette, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (23.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (8.1%), and residents who report German roots (5.2%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (3.1%), along with some Scots-Irish ancestry residents (2.7%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (43.4% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (93.5%) 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.
