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.
Cortland is a very small town located in the state of Illinois. With a population of 4,488 people and just one neighborhood, Cortland is the 377th largest community in Illinois.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Cortland is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Cortland is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Cortland who work in office and administrative support (16.99%), sales jobs (10.39%), and business and financial occupations (7.64%).
Also of interest is that Cortland has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Demographics
In terms of college education, Cortland is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 31.09% of adults in Cortland have a college degree.
The per capita income in Cortland in 2022 was $35,862, which is middle income relative to Illinois and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $143,448 for a family of four. However, Cortland contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Cortland is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Cortland home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Cortland residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Cortland also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 17.45% of the town’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Cortland include German, Irish, Polish, English, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Cortland is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
In addition, according to NeighborhoodScout's research, is better suited for first-time home buyers than 86.1% of neighborhoods in the state. Most homes here are priced below the state's median house value, yet maintain comparably good appreciation rates over the last decade relative to other neighborhoods in Illinois. Along with an exclusive multi-metric measure of neighborhood quality developed by NeighborhoodScout that scores high here in this neighborhood, this means that buying into the neighborhood is not only an accessible option but considered a decent first time home buyer choice for building equity in your first home, while being in a quality neighborhood
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Eastern European and Czechoslovakian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Eastern European ancestry and 0.7% have Czechoslovakian ancestry.
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 Cortland are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 71.9% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 100.0% of America'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, 37.9% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 21.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (20.1%), and 19.7% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 90.3% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (8.4%).
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 Cortland, IL, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (22.2%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (12.7%), and residents who report Irish roots (12.0%), and some of the residents are also of Italian ancestry (8.5%), along with some English ancestry residents (8.2%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (30.4% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (82.5%) 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 (8.1%) . 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.
