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.
Buies Creek is a very small town located in the state of North Carolina. With a population of 3,253 people and just one neighborhood, Buies Creek is the 241st largest community in North Carolina. Much of the housing stock in Buies Creek was built relatively recently. The construction of new real estate can often be taken as an indication that the local Buies Creek economy is robust, and that jobs or other amenities are attracting an influx of new residents. This seems to be the case in Buies Creek, where the median household income is $42,208.00.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Buies Creek is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Buies Creek is a town of professionals, service providers, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Buies Creek who work in food service (13.98%), personal care services (11.84%), and healthcare (11.20%).
Of important note, Buies Creek is also a town of artists. Buies Creek has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Buies Creek’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
For a small town, there is also a high proportion of single, often educated, people living in Buies Creek. This is not typical for smaller communities in America, and adds a feeling of vibrancy to Buies Creek.
Being a small town, Buies Creek does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Buies Creek, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Buies Creek is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 63.57% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Buies Creek in 2022 was $18,595, which is low income relative to North Carolina and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $74,380 for a family of four. However, Buies Creek contains both very wealthy and poor people as well. Buies Creek also has one of the higher rates of people living in poverty in the nation, with 44.07% of its population below the federal poverty line.
Buies Creek is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Buies Creek home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Buies Creek residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Buies Creek include German, English, Scottish, Polish, and Irish.
The most common language spoken in Buies Creek is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and Polish.
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
An extraordinary 35.0% of the residents of the neighborhood are currently enrolled in college. This is such a large part of life in this neighborhood that the neighborhood changes a great deal with the change of semesters and is far quieter during the summer when many students are away.
Modes of Transportation
More people in choose to walk to work each day (13.4%) than almost any neighborhood in America. If you are attracted to the idea of being able to walk to work, this neighborhood could be a good choice.
Migration / Stability
The freedom of moving to new places versus the comfort of home. How much and how often people move not only can create diverse and worldly neighborhoods, but simultaneously it can produce a loss of intimacy with one's surroundings and a lack of connectedness to one's neighbors. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research has identified this neighborhood as unique with regard to the transience of its populace. In the neighborhood, a greater proportion of the residents living here today did not live here five years ago than is found in 96.8% of U.S. Neighborhoods. This neighborhood, more than almost any other in America, has new residents from other areas.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scottish ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 5.2% of this neighborhood's residents have Scottish ancestry.
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 Buies Creek are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 78.9% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 54.3% 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, 38.5% 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 32.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (21.4%), and 7.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 91.4% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (6.3%).
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 Buies Creek, NC, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (10.7%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (8.4%), and residents who report Irish roots (7.2%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (5.2%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (5.0%), 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 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (40.7% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (75.9%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In addition, quite a number also hop out the door and walk to work to get to work (13.4%) and 7.3% of residents also carpool with coworkers, friends, or neighbors 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.
