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.
Fairplay is a tiny town located in the state of Colorado. With a population of 738 people and just one neighborhood, Fairplay is the 194th largest community in Colorado.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Fairplay is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Fairplay is a town of service providers, managers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Fairplay who work in management occupations (17.12%), law enforcement and fire fighting (12.75%), and food service (12.02%).
A relatively large number of people in Fairplay telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 14.75% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. 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
Being a small town, Fairplay does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The education level of Fairplay citizens is a little higher than the average for US cities and towns: 24.24% of adults in Fairplay have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Fairplay in 2022 was $44,129, which is upper middle income relative to Colorado and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $176,516 for a family of four. However, Fairplay contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Fairplay home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Fairplay residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Fairplay include German, English, Irish, Norwegian, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Fairplay is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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 Fairplay, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 48.2% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 98.5% 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, 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 25 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 93.6% of America.
Occupations
From major sales accounts to fast-food workers, sales and service employees are often the backbone of the local economy. In the neighborhood, they truly stand out. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis identifies this neighborhood as having a higher percentage of sales and service workers than 95.7% of all American neighborhoods.
People
There is an especially high percentage of incarcerated people (0.7%) living in the neighborhood.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swiss and Armenian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 2.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Swiss ancestry and 0.8% have Armenian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 8.5% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
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 Fairplay are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 58.3% 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 64.6% 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, 38.8% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 27.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (21.9%), and 11.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.0% of households. Some people also speak Italian (8.5%).
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 Fairplay, CO, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (22.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (10.8%), and residents who report Irish roots (5.4%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (4.0%), along with some Russian ancestry residents (3.0%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (31.5% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (55.7%) 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 (18.2%) and 5.1% of residents also hop out the door and walk to work 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.
