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.
La Luz is a very small town located in the state of New Mexico. With a population of 1,578 people and just one neighborhood, La Luz is the 90th largest community in New Mexico.
Occupations and Workforce
La Luz is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, La Luz is a town of construction workers and builders, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in La Luz who work in management occupations (15.02%), healthcare suport services (13.67%), and sales jobs (10.01%).
And if you like science, one thing you'll find is that La Luz has lots of scientists living in town - whether they be life scientists, physical scientists (like astronomers), or social scientists (like geographers!). So, if you're scientific-minded, you might like it here too.
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 9.02% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, La Luz has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes La Luz a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One of the benefits of La Luz is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 16.26 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
Being a small town, La Luz does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
The education level of La Luz citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 19.72% of adults 25 and older in La Luz have a college degree.
The per capita income in La Luz in 2022 was $28,226, which is middle income relative to New Mexico, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $112,904 for a family of four. However, La Luz contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
La Luz is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call La Luz 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 La Luz, accounting for 49.14% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of La Luz residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in La Luz include English, Irish, German, French, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in La Luz is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
When you see a neighborhood for the first time, the most important thing is often the way it looks, like its homes and its setting. Some places look the same, but they only reveal their true character after living in them for a while because they contain a unique mix of occupational or cultural groups. This neighborhood is very unique in some important ways, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive exploration and analysis.
Real Estate
The neighborhood stands out for having the majority of its residential real estate made up of mobile homes. In fact, 59.0% of the occupied real estate here are mobile homes, which is a greater proportion than is found in 99.6% of the neighborhoods in the U.S. If you like mobile homes, this might be a great neighborhood in which to look for real estate.
Modes of Transportation
In the neighborhood, walking to work is a real option for many. In fact, NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research reveals walking to and from work is the chosen way to commute for 17.5% of residents here. This is a higher proportion of walking commuters than we found in 97.8% of American neighborhoods. Get ready to put on your walking shoes if you move here!
The Neighbors
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in La Luz are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 93.4% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 51.4% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 94.6% 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, 32.0% 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 30.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (20.8%), and 16.4% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
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 90.5% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Italian.
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 La Luz, NM, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (34.9%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (18.5%), and residents who report Irish roots (14.0%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (12.5%), along with some Spanish ancestry residents (3.5%), 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 (50.9% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (64.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (17.5%) and 7.0% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors 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.
