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.
Sharpsburg is a very small borough located in the state of Pennsylvania. With a population of 3,062 people and just one neighborhood, Sharpsburg is the 472nd largest community in Pennsylvania. Sharpsburg has an unusually large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic boroughs.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some boroughs where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Sharpsburg is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Sharpsburg is a borough of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sharpsburg who work in office and administrative support (20.68%), sales jobs (9.12%), and business and financial occupations (8.41%).
Of important note, Sharpsburg is also a borough of artists. Sharpsburg has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Sharpsburg’s character.
Also of interest is that Sharpsburg 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 Sharpsburg telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 17.08% 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
For a small borough, Sharpsburg has a lot of people who use public transit to get to work, and those that do mostly ride the bus. This suggests that a real need for low-cost transportation in Sharpsburg exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
Demographics
The population of Sharpsburg is very well educated relative to most cities and towns in the nation, where the average community has 21.84% of its adult population holding a 4-year degree or higher: 34.90% of adults in Sharpsburg have a bachelor's degree or even advanced degree.
The per capita income in Sharpsburg in 2022 was $37,918, which is upper middle income relative to Pennsylvania and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $151,672 for a family of four. However, Sharpsburg contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Sharpsburg is a somewhat ethnically-diverse borough. The people who call Sharpsburg home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sharpsburg residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Sharpsburg include German, Italian, Irish, Polish, and English.
The most common language spoken in Sharpsburg is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.
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
The types of households in a neighborhood can tell a lot about the character and lifestyle of those living here. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood, above nearly every neighborhood in America, has a greater percentage of its residents living alone: 50.6%. This is a higher percent living alone than we found in 95.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods. Often residents who live alone are new arrivals to an area who are single, and often senior citizens who have lost a spouse.
In addition, the neighborhood stands out within Pennsylvania for its college student friendly environment. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood is home to a number of college students, is relatively walkable, and above average in safety. In combination, this makes it stand out for a good place for college students to consider. Because a number of college students live here, this neighborhood may be close to a college campus and offer certain amenities nearby geared towards the student body. While it's not an environment for everyone, ambitious scholars can enjoy seasonal excitement between semesters and school breaks, and parents can rest easy knowing that the area has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 6.6% of college-friendly places to live in PA.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Italian and Slovak ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 21.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Italian ancestry and 1.1% have Slovak ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 10.1% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Polish at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.2% 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 Sharpsburg are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 81.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 21.5% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 71.9% of U.S. neighborhoods.
The old saying "you are what you eat" is true. But it is also true that you are what you do for a living. The types of occupations your neighbors have shape their character, and together as a group, their collective occupations shape the culture of a place.
In the neighborhood, 39.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 24.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (20.4%), and 16.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
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 94.8% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Spanish.
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 Sharpsburg, PA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (26.4%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (21.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (16.6%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (6.8%), along with some English ancestry residents (5.5%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (33.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (63.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also ride the bus to get to work (8.3%) and 5.1% 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.
