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.
Volga is a very small city located in the state of South Dakota. With a population of 2,340 people and just one neighborhood, Volga is the 65th largest community in South Dakota. There's nothing like the smell of a brand new house, and in Volga, you'll find that a large proportion of houses were recently built. New growth in residential real estate is an indication that people are choosing to move to Volga, and putting down their money on brand new construction. Volga’s real estate is, on average, some of the newest in the nation. Volga does seem to be experiencing an influx of affluent people, because the median household income is $75,417.00.
Volga real estate is some of the most expensive in South Dakota, although Volga house values don't compare to the most expensive real estate in the U.S.
Occupations and Workforce
Volga is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Volga is a city of professionals, sales and office workers, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Volga who work in office and administrative support (12.22%), teaching (11.52%), and management occupations (9.13%).
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 10.70% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
The overall crime rate in Volga is one of the lowest in the US. This makes it one of the safer places to live in the country in terms of crime.
One of the benefits of Volga is that there is very little traffic. The average commute to work is 17.44 minutes, which is substantially less than the national average. Not only does this mean that the drive to work is less aggravating, but noise and pollution levels are lower as a result.
Being a small city, Volga does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
Volga is one of the most well-educated cities in the nation. 41.59% of adults in Volga have at least a bachelor's degree. Compare that to the average community in America, which has just 21.84% with a bachelor's degree or higher.
The per capita income in Volga in 2022 was $34,647, which is middle income relative to South Dakota and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $138,588 for a family of four. However, Volga contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Volga home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Volga residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Volga include German, Norwegian, Irish, Dutch, and Scandinavian.
The most common language spoken in Volga is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and German/Yiddish.
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.
Real Estate
This neighborhood has wide open spaces, few people, and lots of space to stretch out. If you like locations that fit that description, you may like this neighborhood. Based on NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis, with only 13 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 96.3% of America.
Occupations
Each year, fewer and fewer Americans make their living as farmers, foresters, or fishers. But the neighborhood truly stands out among U.S. neighborhoods. According to exclusive NeighborhoodScout analysis, this neighborhood has a greater proportion of farmers, foresters, or fishers than 95.7% of all American neighborhoods. This is truly a unique cultural characteristic of this neighborhood.
People
If you're planning where to retire, the neighborhood in Volga 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 SD, 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 88.8% of the neighborhoods in South Dakota. If you are considering retiring to South Dakota, this is a good neighborhood to look at. In addition to being an excellent choice for active retirees, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for highly educated executives.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Norwegian and Dutch ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 23.9% of this neighborhood's residents have Norwegian ancestry and 7.7% have Dutch 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 Volga are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 54.7% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 1.3% 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 77.4% of America'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, 47.6% 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 23.1% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (13.7%), and 11.7% 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 97.7% of households.
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 Volga, SD, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (34.4%). There are also a number of people of Norwegian ancestry (23.9%), and residents who report Irish roots (8.4%), and some of the residents are also of Dutch ancestry (7.7%), along with some English ancestry residents (5.2%), 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 (45.5% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans.
Here most residents (77.4%) 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 (9.4%) . 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.
