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.
Sound Beach is a somewhat small coastal town (i.e. on the ocean, a bay, or inlet) located in the state of New York. With a population of 7,416 people and just one neighborhood, Sound Beach is the 233rd largest community in New York.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Sound Beach isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Sound Beach are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Sound Beach is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and service providers. There are especially a lot of people living in Sound Beach who work in teaching (14.35%), office and administrative support (10.49%), and healthcare (8.14%).
Also of interest is that Sound Beach has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
Because of many things, Sound Beach is a great place for families with children to consider. First of all, many other families with children live here, making Sound Beach 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, Sound Beach has a high rate of owner-occupied single family homes, which tends to reflect stability in the local community. Finally, Sound Beach’s overall crime rate is lower than average for the country.
Sound Beach is also nautical, which means that parts of it are somewhat historic and touch the ocean or tidal bodies of water, such as inlets and bays. Such areas are often places that visitors and locals go for waterfront activities or taking in the scenery.
In Sound Beach, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 36.61 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average. One bright side is that local public transit is widely used, so it may be an option to avoid the headache of driving in the heavy traffic by leaving the car at home and taking transit.
In Sound Beach, a lot of people use the train to get to work every day though Sound Beach is a relatively small town. Those that ride the train are primarily traveling out of town to good jobs in other cities.
Demographics
The education level of Sound Beach ranks among the highest in the nation. Of the 25-and-older adult population in Sound Beach, 47.40% have at least a bachelor's degree. The typical US community has just 21.84% of its adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree.
The per capita income in Sound Beach in 2022 was $51,382, which is upper middle income relative to New York, and wealthy relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $205,528 for a family of four.
Sound Beach is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Sound Beach home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Sound Beach residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Sound Beach include Irish, Italian, German, Polish, and Scottish.
The most common language spoken in Sound Beach is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Spanish.
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.
Real Estate
Do you like a coastal setting? If so, this neighborhood may be to your liking. The neighborhood is on the ocean, a bay, or inlet. Often such coastal places have amenities and recreational activities on the waterfront that are attractive to residents and visitors alike. In addition to being coastal, is a very nautical neighborhood, meaning that it is somewhat historic, walkable, densely populated and on the water. This gives the neighborhood a very nautical feel, with some seaside and shipping feel, which some may really enjoy the sights and sounds of.
In addition, the neighborhood has earned the amazing distinction of having one of the highest rates of detached, single-family homes of any neighborhood in the U.S. With 97.5% of the residential real estate here made up of free-standing single-family homes, there is a greater proportion of single-family homes here than in 95.5% of all neighborhoods in America.
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.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Irish and Italian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 30.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Irish ancestry and 26.9% have Italian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 21.8% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Italian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 99.8% 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 Sound Beach are wealthy, making it among the 15% highest income neighborhoods in America. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 88.7% 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.
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, 52.1% 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 18.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (18.5%), and 10.3% 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 English, spoken by 92.4% of households. Other important languages spoken here include Italian, Spanish and Native American languages.
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 Sound Beach, NY, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as Irish (30.4%). There are also a number of people of Italian ancestry (26.9%), and residents who report German roots (12.9%), and some of the residents are also of Polish ancestry (9.4%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (6.9%), 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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (38.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (82.2%) 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.
