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.
Branchland is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 3,293 people and just one neighborhood, Branchland is the 61st largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Branchland is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 42.16% of the Branchland workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Branchland is a town of sales and office workers, service providers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Branchland who work in office and administrative support (13.60%), sales jobs (10.79%), and management occupations (8.98%).
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, Branchland has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Branchland a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Branchland, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 39.47 minutes every day commuting to work.
Demographics
The population of Branchland has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 4.89% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Branchland in 2022 was $24,304, which is lower middle income relative to West Virginia, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $97,216 for a family of four. However, Branchland contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Branchland home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Branchland residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Branchland include English, Irish, Dutch, Scots-Irish, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Branchland is English. Other important languages spoken here include Thai and Italian.
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.
Length of Commute
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 12.6% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.6% of all neighborhoods in America.
People
The neighborhood is unique for having just 4.9% of adults here having earned a bachelor's degree. This is a lower rate of college graduates than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.3% of America's neighborhoods.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 95.6% of all neighborhoods in America, with 31.6% of the occupied housing here being classified as mobile homes. So if you are looking for a mobile home, or you like the look and feel of mobile home parks, this neighborhood might have the setting you desire.
In addition, uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 23 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 94.0% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch 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 Branchland are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 79.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 36.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 86.9% of U.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, 41.5% of the working population is employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 25.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (17.9%), and 15.0% in executive, management, and professional occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 99.0% of households.
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 Branchland, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (6.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (5.8%), and residents who report Dutch roots (3.7%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (2.5%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (2.3%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (35.6% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.2%) 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 (7.6%) and 6.4% 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.
