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.
Sunderland - Whately is a somewhat small town located in the state of Massachusetts. With a population of 5,270 people and just one neighborhood, Sunderland - Whately is the 248th largest community in Massachusetts.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Sunderland - Whately isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Sunderland - Whately are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Sunderland - Whately is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sunderland - Whately who work in teaching (22.44%), office and administrative support (9.83%), and food service (8.04%).
Also of interest is that Sunderland - Whately 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 Sunderland - Whately telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 12.82% 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 town, there is also a high proportion of single, often educated, people living in Sunderland - Whately. This is not typical for smaller communities in America, and adds a feeling of vibrancy to Sunderland - Whately.
In Sunderland - Whately, a lot of people use the bus to get to work every day though Sunderland - Whately is a relatively small town. Those that ride the bus are primarily traveling out of town to good jobs in other cities.
Demographics
If knowledge is power, Sunderland - Whately is a pretty powerful place. 51.06% of the adults in Sunderland - Whately have earned a 4-year college degree, masters degree, MD, law degree, or even PhD. Compare that to the national average of 21.84% for all cities and towns.
The per capita income in Sunderland - Whately in 2022 was $45,251, which is lower middle income relative to Massachusetts, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $181,004 for a family of four. However, Sunderland - Whately contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Sunderland - Whately is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Sunderland - Whately home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sunderland - Whately residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Sunderland - Whately include Polish, Irish, Italian, English, and German.
The most common language spoken in Sunderland - Whately is English. Other important languages spoken here include Chinese and Portuguese.
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
If you're nearing retirement age, or in retirement, the is an excellent choice for you to consider for top-quality retirement living. This neighborhood is rated by NeighborhoodScout as among the top 7.6% of retiree-friendly neighborhoods in Massachusetts, combining peace and quiet, safety from crime, and offering diverse housing options from which retirees can choose. Maybe it's because of these amenities that a large proportion of the residents here are college educated seniors, mixed with other age groups. For these and other reasons, NeighborhoodScout identifies this neighborhood as a top-notch place to consider if you are thinking of or planning to retire in Massachusetts.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Polish and French Canadian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 24.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Polish ancestry and 4.9% have French Canadian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.3% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Mon-Khmer, which is the dominant language of Cambodia, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 97.2% 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 Sunderland - Whately are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 45.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 9.7% 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 51.4% of America'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, 50.0% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional 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 19.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (18.0%), and 11.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 87.9% of households. Some people also speak Chinese (3.4%).
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 Sunderland - Whately, MA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Polish (24.4%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (17.7%), and residents who report Italian roots (11.3%), and some of the residents are also of English ancestry (11.3%), along with some Asian ancestry residents (9.6%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (55.2% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (70.3%) 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 (9.5%) and 6.1% 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.
