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.
Garden Valley is a very small town located in the state of California. With a population of 1,714 people and just one neighborhood, Garden Valley is the 685th largest community in California.
Occupations and Workforce
Garden Valley is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 89.90% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Garden Valley is a town of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Garden Valley who work in healthcare suport services (19.51%), sales jobs (18.29%), and business and financial occupations (12.02%).
Of important note, Garden Valley is also a town of artists. Garden Valley has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Garden Valley’s character.
Also of interest is that Garden Valley has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Garden Valley has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Garden Valley has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Garden Valley than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Garden Valley may be for you.
One downside of living in Garden Valley, however, is that residents on average have to contend with a long commute, spending on average 34.19 minutes every day commuting to work.
As is often the case in a small town, Garden Valley doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
The population of Garden Valley overall has a level of education that is slightly above the US average for all US cities and towns of 21.84%. Of adults 25 and older in Garden Valley, 24.96% have at least a bachelor's degree.
The per capita income in Garden Valley in 2022 was $43,958, which is middle income relative to California, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $175,832 for a family of four. However, Garden Valley contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Garden Valley home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Garden Valley residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Garden Valley include German, English, Irish, Scottish, and British.
The most common language spoken in Garden Valley is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Persian.
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 Garden Valley, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Length of Commute
Regardless of the means by which residents commute, this neighborhood has a length of commute that is notable. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 12.5% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 97.5% of all neighborhoods in America.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Garden Valley is a great option to consider. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive retirement dream area analysis, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety ratings compared to other neighborhoods in CA, offers a wide range of housing options, and has already attracted an enviable mix of college educated seniors. This neighborhood ranks as better for retirement living than 88.9% of the neighborhoods in California. If you are considering retiring to California, this is a good neighborhood to look at.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more British and Armenian ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 3.9% of this neighborhood's residents have British ancestry and 1.0% have Armenian ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 0.6% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Persian at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 96.2% 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 Garden Valley are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 64.7% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 13.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 56.5% of U.S. neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 36.4% 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 34.0% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (19.5%), and 10.1% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.2% of households. Some people also speak Italian (6.5%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Garden Valley, CA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (15.6%). There are also a number of people of English ancestry (11.2%), and residents who report Spanish roots (7.0%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.6%), along with some Scottish ancestry residents (4.0%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (35.8% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods. However, there is also a significant group of residents (12.5%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (82.6%) 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 (14.8%) . 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.
