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.
Prospect Park is a somewhat small borough located in the state of New Jersey. With a population of 6,219 people and just one neighborhood, Prospect Park is the 272nd largest community in New Jersey. Much of the housing stock in Prospect Park was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs in the country.
Housing costs in Prospect Park are among some of the highest in the nation, although real estate prices here don't compare to real estate prices in the most expensive communities in New Jersey.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Prospect Park, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 37.07% of Prospect Park’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Prospect Park is a borough of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Prospect Park who work in office and administrative support (12.91%), healthcare suport services (8.37%), and teaching (6.85%).
Also of interest is that Prospect Park has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Demographics
The citizens of Prospect Park are slightly better educated than the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns, with 24.45% of adults in Prospect Park having a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Prospect Park in 2022 was $28,671, which is low income relative to New Jersey, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $114,684 for a family of four. However, Prospect Park contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Prospect Park is an extremely ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Prospect Park home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. People of Hispanic or Latino origin are the most prevalent group in Prospect Park, accounting for 63.73% of the borough’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Prospect Park residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Prospect Park include Dutch, Italian, Czech, Haitian, and Jamaican.
Foreign born people are also an important part of Prospect Park's cultural character, accounting for 41.87% of the borough’s population.
The most common language spoken in Prospect Park is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Other Indo-European.
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.
Real Estate
Three-deckers, duplexes, old Victorian homes cut up into apartments. Independent stores on the corner selling pizza. These are some of the hallmarks of neighborhoods with lots of small 2, 3, and 4 unit apartment buildings. The neighborhood really stands out in this regard, however, as it is dominated by such small apartment buildings more than nearly any other neighborhood in America. This is a stunning visual and lifestyle example of this type of neighborhood. In fact, 72.2% of the real estate here are small 2, 3, or 4 unit apartment buildings, which is a higher proportion than found in 99.8% of America's neighborhoods.
In addition, being a walkable neighborhood can help increase property values for the simple reason that people enjoy it and value it. To put it plainly, despite our love affair with the automobile, American's enjoy taking to the streets, sidewalks, paths, and courtyards of a place to get a coffee, relax, and take in the sights and sounds. And, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive and first quantitative walkable score index, the neighborhood is one of the most walkable neighborhoods in America.
People
Whether by choice, divorce, or unplanned pregnancy, single moms may have the toughest job in the book. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that the neighborhood has more single mother households than 97.0% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. Often high concentrations of single mother homes can be a strong indicator of family and social issues such as poverty, high rates of school dropouts, crime, and other societal problems.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more South American and Dominican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 24.1% of this neighborhood's residents have South American ancestry and 19.1% have Dominican 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 Prospect Park are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 84.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 37.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 87.5% 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, 36.6% 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 23.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (21.3%), and 18.1% 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 Spanish, spoken by 54.7% of households. Some people also speak English (36.9%).
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 Prospect Park, NJ, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as South American (24.1%). There are also a number of people of Dominican ancestry (19.1%), and residents who report Puerto Rican roots (8.5%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (5.7%), along with some Dutch ancestry residents (4.6%), among others. In addition, 41.9% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 (47.6% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (74.9%) 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 (20.0%) . 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.
