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.
Flat Rock is a very small town located in the state of Alabama. With a population of 3,216 people and just one neighborhood, Flat Rock is the 168th largest community in Alabama.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Flat Rock, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 49.90% of Flat Rock’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Flat Rock is a town of construction workers and builders, managers, and production and manufacturing workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Flat Rock who work in management occupations (8.72%), business and financial occupations (8.33%), and teaching (7.95%).
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Flat Rock has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Flat Rock has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Flat Rock than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Flat Rock may be for you.
In Flat Rock, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 31.28 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, Flat Rock doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The percentage of people in Flat Rock with college degrees is quite a bit lower than the national average for cities and towns of 21.84%: just 11.98% of people over 25 have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Flat Rock in 2018 was $23,802, which is lower middle income relative to Alabama, and low income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $95,208 for a family of four. However, Flat Rock contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Flat Rock home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Flat Rock residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Flat Rock include English, German, Dutch, Irish, and Scots-Irish.
The most common language spoken in Flat Rock is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and African languages.
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.
Occupations
NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research identifies the neighborhood as having one of the highest concentrations of people employed in manufacturing or as laborers of any neighborhood in America. In fact, despite the loss of manufacturing jobs nationally, this neighborhood has 49.9% of its working residents employed in such fields, which is a higher proportion than 98.8% of American neighborhoods.
Real Estate
The real estate in this neighborhood consists of more mobile homes than 96.7% of all neighborhoods in America, with 35.3% 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, vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 31.6% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.3% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
Furthermore, this neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 35 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 91.7% of America.
Modes of Transportation
Our research shows that more people carpool to work here in the (24.1%) than in 96.6% of the neighborhoods in America.
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, 4.2% 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 Flat Rock are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 91.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 16.0% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.0% 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, 49.9% 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 26.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (16.6%), and 6.8% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% 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 Flat Rock, AL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (9.8%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (8.0%), and residents who report Dutch roots (4.2%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (2.1%).
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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (36.0% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (68.0%) 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 (24.1%) . 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.
