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.
Balcones Heights is a very small city located in the state of Texas. With a population of 2,711 people and just one neighborhood, Balcones Heights is the 548th largest community in Texas.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Balcones Heights is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Balcones Heights is a city of sales and office workers, service providers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Balcones Heights who work in office and administrative support (20.93%), food service (11.56%), and sales jobs (10.64%).
Also of interest is that Balcones Heights has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
For a small city, Balcones Heights 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 Balcones Heights exists, and local transit is helping to meet that need.
Demographics
The rate of college-level education in Balcones Heights is quite a bit lower than the national average among all cities of 21.84%: just 10.74% of people here over 25 have a bachelor's degree or an advanced degree.
The per capita income in Balcones Heights in 2022 was $20,769, which is low income relative to Texas and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $83,076 for a family of four. Balcones Heights also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 44.12% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Balcones Heights is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Balcones Heights 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 Balcones Heights, accounting for 71.82% of the city’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Balcones Heights residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Balcones Heights include Irish, German, English, Ethiopian, and French.
The most common language spoken in Balcones Heights is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and French.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Balcones Heights, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
Divorcees may find friendship and understanding in this neighborhood, as 22.9% of its residents are divorced. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis found that this divorce rate is higher than in 98.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
In addition, the neighborhood stands out for having an average per capita income lower than 97.8% of the neighborhoods in the United States.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (23.5%) than in 96.2% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Mexican ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 65.8% of this neighborhood's residents have Mexican ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 3.0% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak African languages at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.1% 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 Balcones Heights are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 97.8% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 46.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 92.6% 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, 32.2% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 23.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in executive, management, and professional occupations (22.8%), and 21.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support 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 55.6% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish, French and African languages.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is the shared learned behavior of peoples. Undeniably, different ethnicities and ancestries have different cultural traditions, and as a result, neighborhoods with concentrations of residents of one or another ethnicities or ancestries will express those cultures. It is what makes the North End in Boston so fun to visit for the Italian restaurants, bakeries, culture, and charm, and similarly, why people enjoy visiting Chinatown in San Francisco.
In the neighborhood in Balcones Heights, TX, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (65.8%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (3.9%), and residents who report German roots (3.8%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (2.9%), along with some French ancestry residents (1.6%), among others. In addition, 10.4% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 (50.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (59.2%) 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 (23.5%) and 9.7% of residents also ride the bus 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.
