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.
Lafayette is a very small city located in the state of Oregon. With a population of 4,530 people and just one neighborhood, Lafayette is the 95th largest community in Oregon. Lafayette has seen a significant amount of newer housing growth in recent years. Quite often, new home construction is the result of new residents moving in who are middle class or wealthier, attracted by jobs, a healthy local economy, or other amenities as they leave nearby or far away areas for greener pastures. This seems to be the case in Lafayette, where the median household income is $93,243.00.
Housing costs in Lafayette are among some of the highest in the nation, although real estate prices here don't compare to real estate prices in the most expensive communities in Oregon.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some cities where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Lafayette is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Lafayette is a city of service providers, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Lafayette who work in office and administrative support (15.29%), management occupations (11.75%), and healthcare suport services (11.53%).
Also of interest is that Lafayette has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Setting & Lifestyle
One downside of living in Lafayette is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Lafayette, the average commute to work is 35.00 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Demographics
The education level of Lafayette citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 18.07% of adults 25 and older in Lafayette have a college degree.
The per capita income in Lafayette in 2022 was $32,364, which is middle income relative to Oregon and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $129,456 for a family of four. However, Lafayette contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Lafayette is an extremely ethnically-diverse city. The people who call Lafayette home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Lafayette residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Lafayette also has a sizeable Hispanic population (people of Hispanic origin can be of any race). People of Hispanic or Latino origin account for 26.62% of the city’s residents. Important ancestries of people in Lafayette include English, German, Irish, Italian, and Polish.
The most common language spoken in Lafayette is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and West Germanic languages.
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
According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, is among the best neighborhoods for families in Oregon. In fact, this neighborhood is more family-friendly than 95.1% of neighborhoods in the entire state of Oregon. Its combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes gives this area the look and feel of a "Leave It to Beaver" episode. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a strong sense of community. In addition, the high number of college-educated parents influences the academic success of the local schools. Overall, you will find all of the amenities a family needs to thrive in the neighborhood. In addition to being an excellent choice for families with school-aged children, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for college students.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Swiss ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 1.7% of this neighborhood's residents have Swiss 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 Lafayette are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 76.2% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 3.3% 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 70.3% 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, 30.7% 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 25.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (22.7%), and 19.0% in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 85.2% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (14.8%).
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 Lafayette, OR, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (19.8%). There are also a number of people of Mexican ancestry (19.1%), and residents who report English roots (18.9%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (15.5%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (3.9%), among others.
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 (33.0% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (74.7%) 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 (13.7%) . 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.
