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.
Walnut Grove - Vesta is a very small town located in the state of Minnesota. With a population of 2,646 people and just one neighborhood, Walnut Grove - Vesta is the 269th largest community in Minnesota. Much of the housing stock in Walnut Grove - Vesta was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic towns in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Walnut Grove - Vesta is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Walnut Grove - Vesta is a town of managers, sales and office workers, and professionals. There are especially a lot of people living in Walnut Grove - Vesta who work in management occupations (16.40%), office and administrative support (10.88%), and sales jobs (7.05%).
One interesting thing about the economy is that relatively large numbers of people worked from their home: 13.00% of the workforce. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce this is high compared to the rest of the county. 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
Because of many things, Walnut Grove - Vesta is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Walnut Grove - Vesta a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families, as well as find family-oriented services and community. The town’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic values. With regard to real estate, Walnut Grove - Vesta has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Walnut Grove - Vesta’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
Walnut Grove - Vesta is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The percentage of adults in Walnut Grove - Vesta who are college-educated is close to the national average for all communities of 21.84%: 18.98% of the adults in Walnut Grove - Vesta have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree.
The per capita income in Walnut Grove - Vesta in 2022 was $31,561, which is lower middle income relative to Minnesota, and middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $126,244 for a family of four. However, Walnut Grove - Vesta contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Walnut Grove - Vesta is a very ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Walnut Grove - Vesta home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Walnut Grove - Vesta residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Walnut Grove - Vesta include German, Norwegian, Belgian, Irish, and Swedish.
The most common language spoken in Walnut Grove - Vesta is English. Other important languages spoken here include Miao/Hmong and Polish.
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 Walnut Grove - Vesta, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Real Estate
Uncrowded roads, rural America and space to be the individual you are. If you like these characteristics, this neighborhood may fit you. With just 11 residents per square mile, is less crowded than 97.0% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Occupations
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 95.6% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Belgian and Norwegian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 5.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Belgian ancestry and 9.5% have Norwegian 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 Walnut Grove - Vesta are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 42.1% of the neighborhoods in America. With 16.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 62.2% 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, 36.0% 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 27.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (17.1%), and 15.6% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 89.6% of households. Some people also speak Polish (3.6%).
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 Walnut Grove - Vesta, MN, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (36.9%). There are also a number of people of Asian ancestry (12.8%), and residents who report Norwegian roots (9.5%), and some of the residents are also of Belgian ancestry (5.9%), along with some Irish ancestry residents (5.1%), 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 (34.9% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (75.6%) 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 (7.6%) . 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.
