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.
Hills is a tiny city located in the state of Minnesota. With a population of 668 people and just one neighborhood, Hills is the 424th largest community in Minnesota. Much of the housing stock in Hills was built prior to World War II, making it one of the older and more historic cities in the country.
Occupations and Workforce
Because occupations involving physical labor dominate the local economy, Hills is generally considered to be a blue-collar town. 35.14% of the Hills workforce is employed in blue-collar occupations, compared to the national average of 27.7%. Overall, Hills is a city of service providers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Hills who work in healthcare (12.03%), business and financial occupations (8.73%), and maintenance occupations (6.84%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Hills is a good choice for families with children because of several factors. Many other families with children live here, making it a place where both parents and children are more likely to develop social ties with other families. The city’s good public school district and large population of college-educated adults provide an environment conducive to academic success. Many people own their own single-family homes, providing areas for children to play and stability in the community. Finally, Hills’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the country, making it one of the safest places to raise a family.
Hills is a small city, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The education level of Hills citizens, measured as those with bachelor's degrees or advanced degrees, is similar to the national average for all American cities and towns. 19.07% of adults 25 and older in Hills have a college degree.
The per capita income in Hills in 2022 was $35,539, which is middle income relative to Minnesota and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $142,156 for a family of four. However, Hills contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Hills home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Hills residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Hills include German, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, and Irish.
The most common language spoken in Hills is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and Italian.
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
Unpopulated, and rural, the neighborhood is one of the least crowded neighborhoods in all of America. If you like open space, no traffic, and lots of room, this neighborhood may be just what you are looking for. According to NeighborhoodScout's leading research, this neighborhood is less densely populated than 95.0% of the neighborhoods in America.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch and German ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 19.4% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry and 45.2% have German ancestry.
is also pretty special linguistically. Significantly, 1.1% of its residents five years old and above primarily speak Mon-Khmer, which is the dominant language of Cambodia, at home. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is higher than 98.9% 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 Hills are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 64.3% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 11.2% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 53.0% 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, 35.2% 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 26.6% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (24.2%), and 11.2% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 94.3% of households. Some people also speak Spanish (2.9%).
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 Hills, MN, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (45.2%). There are also a number of people of Dutch ancestry (19.4%), and residents who report Norwegian roots (12.1%), and some of the residents are also of Irish ancestry (5.5%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (2.6%), 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 under 15 minutes commuting one-way to work (34.2% of working residents), one of the shortest commutes across America.
Here most residents (86.3%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. 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.
