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.
Stephenson is a somewhat small town located in the state of Virginia. With a population of 7,097 people and just one neighborhood, Stephenson is the 99th largest community in Virginia. There's nothing like the smell of a brand new house, and in Stephenson, you'll find that a large proportion of houses were recently built. New growth in residential real estate is an indication that people are choosing to move to Stephenson, and putting down their money on brand new construction. Stephenson’s real estate is, on average, some of the newest in the nation. Stephenson does seem to be experiencing an influx of affluent people, because the median household income is $102,591.00.
Stephenson real estate is some of the most expensive in Virginia, although Stephenson house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Stephenson is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Stephenson is a town of professionals, managers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Stephenson who work in teaching (11.69%), business and financial occupations (10.36%), and sales jobs (8.42%).
Of important note, Stephenson is also a town of artists. Stephenson has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Stephenson’s character.
Also of interest is that Stephenson has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
A relatively large number of people in Stephenson telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 8.81% 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
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Stephenson has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Stephenson has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Stephenson than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Stephenson may be for you.
One downside of living in Stephenson is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Stephenson, the average commute to work is 32.35 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, Stephenson doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The citizens of Stephenson are among the most well-educated in the nation: 41.97% of adults in Stephenson 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 Stephenson in 2022 was $46,507, which is upper middle income relative to Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $186,028 for a family of four. However, Stephenson contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Stephenson is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Stephenson home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Stephenson residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Stephenson include German, English, Irish, Italian, and European.
The most common language spoken in Stephenson is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Greek ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Greek ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Urdu, which is the national language of Pakistan, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.9% 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 Stephenson are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 75.1% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 4.1% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 67.2% of America'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, 49.3% 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 26.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.9%), and 8.6% in government jobs, whether they are in local, state, or federal positions.
Languages
The languages spoken by people in this neighborhood are diverse. These are tabulated as the languages people preferentially speak when they are at home with their families. The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 90.2% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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 Stephenson, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (18.5%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (17.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (11.7%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (5.8%), along with some Asian ancestry residents (4.8%), 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 (43.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (81.8%) 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 (9.4%) . 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.
