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.
Cottage City is a very small town located in the state of Maryland. With a population of 1,300 people and just one neighborhood, Cottage City is the 216th largest community in Maryland. Cottage City has a large stock of pre-World War II architecture, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Cottage City isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Cottage City are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Cottage City is a town of service providers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Cottage City who work in office and administrative support (13.53%), food service (9.90%), and management occupations (9.90%).
Also of interest is that Cottage City has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 11.24% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. 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
One downside of living in Cottage City, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 38.74 minutes every day commuting to work. However, local public transit is widely used. For those who would prefer to avoid driving entirely and leave their car at home, it may be an option to use the transit instead.
Despite being a small town, Cottage City has a lot of people using the bus to get to and from work every day. Most of these people on the bus are using it to get to good jobs in other cities.
Demographics
The education level of Cottage City citizens is a little higher than the average for US cities and towns: 22.00% of adults in Cottage City have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Cottage City in 2022 was $40,001, which is lower middle income relative to Maryland, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $160,004 for a family of four. However, Cottage City contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Cottage City is an extremely ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Cottage City 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 Cottage City, accounting for 44.84% of the town’s residents (people of Hispanic or Latino origin can be of any race). The greatest number of Cottage City residents report their race to be Black or African-American, followed by White. Important ancestries of people in Cottage City include Irish, Nigerian, German, Other Subsaharan African, and African.
In addition, Cottage City has a lot of people living here who were born outside of the US (49.60%).
The most common language spoken in Cottage City is Spanish. Other important languages spoken here include English and Tagalog.
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 Cottage City, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
People
The neighborhood stands out within Maryland for its college student friendly environment. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood is home to a number of college students, is relatively walkable, and above average in safety. In combination, this makes it stand out for a good place for college students to consider. Because a number of college students live here, this neighborhood may be close to a college campus and offer certain amenities nearby geared towards the student body. While it's not an environment for everyone, ambitious scholars can enjoy seasonal excitement between semesters and school breaks, and parents can rest easy knowing that the area has an above average safety rating. For each of these reasons, the neighborhood is rated among the top 5.1% of college-friendly places to live in MD.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dominican and Haitian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 4.1% of this neighborhood's residents have Dominican ancestry and 1.6% have Haitian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 5.2% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Tagalog, which is the first language of the Philippine region, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.1% 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 Cottage City are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 60.3% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 5.6% 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 62.7% 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, 34.7% 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 28.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (23.9%), and 12.9% 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 Spanish, spoken by 49.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include English, Tagalog (the first language of the Philippine region) and French.
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 Cottage City, MD, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Mexican (7.6%). There are also a number of people of Asian ancestry (7.2%), and residents who report Sub-Saharan African roots (6.4%), and some of the residents are also of Dominican ancestry (4.1%), along with some South American ancestry residents (2.5%), among others. In addition, 41.7% of the residents of this neighborhood were born in another country.
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (33.1% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (55.8%) 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 (13.0%) and 7.7% 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.
