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.
Browns Valley is a very small town located in the state of California. With a population of 4,178 people and just one neighborhood, Browns Valley is the 560th largest community in California.
Housing costs in Browns Valley 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 California.
Occupations and Workforce
Browns Valley is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Browns Valley is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Browns Valley who work in office and administrative support (17.52%), management occupations (13.02%), and art, media, and design (8.45%).
Of important note, Browns Valley is also a town of artists. Browns Valley has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Browns Valley’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
Browns Valley’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
One downside of living in Browns Valley, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 35.97 minutes every day commuting to work.
Browns Valley is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The population of Browns Valley overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Browns Valley, 21.48% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Browns Valley in 2022 was $52,598, which is upper middle income relative to California, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $210,392 for a family of four. However, Browns Valley contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Browns Valley is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Browns Valley home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Browns Valley residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Browns Valley include German, English, Irish, Portuguese, and European.
The most common language spoken in Browns Valley is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Chinese.
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.
People
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
In addition, astoundingly, NeighborhoodScout's research reveals that this single neighborhood has a higher concentration of married couples living here than 96.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods. Whether they have school-aged children or not, married couples are the rule in the neighborhood. If you are a married couple, you may find many people here with a similar lifestyle, and perhaps common interests. But if you are single, you might not find many other singles here.
Also, if you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 5.4% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in California, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in California. In addition to being an excellent choice for active retirees, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for families with school-aged children.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Portuguese and Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Portuguese ancestry and 1.7% have Canadian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.7% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak German/Yiddish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 95.4% 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 Browns Valley are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 70.7% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% 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 100.0% of America'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, 45.6% 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 20.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.5%), and 16.3% 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 English, spoken by 93.9% of households. Some people also speak Italian (5.7%).
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 Browns Valley, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (19.3%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.9%), and some of the residents are also of Mexican ancestry (7.0%), along with some Portuguese ancestry residents (4.7%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (36.1% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
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 (9.8%) . 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.
