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.
Richfield is a tiny town located in the state of North Carolina. With a population of 604 people and just one neighborhood, Richfield is the 469th largest community in North Carolina.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Richfield isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Richfield are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Richfield is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Richfield who work in sales jobs (21.85%), teaching (15.89%), and law enforcement and fire fighting (7.51%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Richfield is a very good place for families to consider. With an enviable combination of good schools, low crime, college-educated neighbors who tend to support education because of their own experiences, and a high rate of home ownership in predominantly single-family properties, Richfield really has some of the features that families look for when choosing a good community to raise children. Is Richfield perfect? Of course not, and if you like frenetic nightlife, it will be far from your cup of tea. But overall this is a solid community, with many things to recommend it as a family-friendly place to live.
Being a small town, Richfield does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
In terms of college education, Richfield is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 30.29% of adults in Richfield have a college degree.
The per capita income in Richfield in 2022 was $31,943, which is middle income relative to North Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $127,772 for a family of four. However, Richfield contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Richfield is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Richfield home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Richfield residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Richfield include English, German, Scots-Irish, Irish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Richfield is English. Other important languages spoken here include Miao/Hmong and Italian.
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 Richfield, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
One of the really interesting characteristics about the neighborhood is that, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research, it is an excellent choice in which to reside for college students. Due to its popularity among college students who already choose to live here, its walkability, and its above average safety from crime, the neighborhood is ideal for prospective or already-enrolled college students. Between semesters and during school breaks, you'll notice that the excitement here fluctuates with the college seasons. Despite the excitement however, parents of college-age children can rest easy knowing that this neighborhood has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 1.2% of college-friendly places to live in the state of North Carolina.
In addition, neighborhoodScout's analysis shows that the neighborhood has a greater concentration of residents currently enrolled in college than 95.9% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. With 11.7% of the population here attending college, this is very much a college-focused neighborhood.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish 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 Richfield are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 20.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 70.0% 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, 32.4% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 30.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (24.1%), and 12.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.8% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (2.3%).
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 Richfield, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (14.4%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (10.3%), and residents who report English roots (10.3%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (3.2%), along with some Asian ancestry residents (3.2%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (75.3%) 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 (11.3%) and 5.6% 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.
