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.
Free Union is a tiny town located in the state of Virginia. With a population of 187 people and just one neighborhood, Free Union is the 400th largest community in Virginia.
Free Union home prices are not only among the most expensive in Virginia, but Free Union real estate also consistently ranks among the most expensive in America.
Occupations and Workforce
Free Union is a decidedly white-collar town, with fully 100.00% of the workforce employed in white-collar jobs, well above the national average. Overall, Free Union is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and transportation and shipping workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Free Union who work in art, media, and design (100.00%), office and administrative support (0.00%), and sales jobs (0.00%).
Of important note, Free Union is also a town of artists. Free Union has more artists, designers and people working in media than 90% of the communities in America. This concentration of artists helps shape Free Union’s character.
Setting & Lifestyle
Free Union 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 town’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, Free Union’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the country, making it one of the safest places to raise a family.
The town is relatively quiet, having a combination of lower population density and few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. For example, Free Union has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Free Union a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
Free Union is a very car-oriented town. 100.00% of residents commute to work in a private automobile rather than by other means, such as public transit, bicycling, or walking. This is because Free Union is a small town , and most people who live here have to drive out of town for work, and the town population is not large nor dense enough to support an extensive public transportation system. Free Union has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
Being a small town, Free Union 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 Free Union, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Free Union is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 100.00% 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 Free Union in 2022 was $43,188, which is upper middle income relative to Virginia and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $172,752 for a family of four.
The people who call Free Union home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Free Union residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Free Union include Irish, Polish, Swedish, German, and English.
Free Union also has a high percentage of its population that was born in another country: 25.95%.
The most common language spoken in Free Union is English. Other important languages spoken here include Polish and African 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
Of note is NeighborhoodScout's research finding that the neighborhood has some of the lowest rates of children living in poverty of any neighborhood in the United States. In a nation where approximately 1 in 4 children are living in poverty, the community truly stands out from the rest in this regard.
In addition, if you are planning to retire in Virginia, this neighborhood should be on your must-see list. For many reasons, may be considered a retiree's dream neighborhood. According to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and metrics, it's peaceful and quiet, has above average safety from crime compared to other neighborhoods in Virginia, while also offering a diverse range of housing options. This, along with the vibrant mix of very educated seniors and other age groups who choose to live here, makes the neighborhood more retiree-friendly than 97.1% of neighborhoods in VA. If a Virginia retirement is in your future, this neighborhood should be one of the places you visit.
Modes of Transportation
If your dream is to be able to ride your bike to work each day, look no further than this unique neighborhood. With 4.2% of residents in the neighborhood commuting on a bicycle to and from work daily, this neighborhood has more bicycle commuters than 97.5% of all neighborhoods in the U.S., according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis.
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 37 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 91.5% of America.
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, 5.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Scottish 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 Free Union are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 72.6% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 0.0% 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 100.0% 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, 57.3% 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 18.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (13.8%), and 9.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 96.0% 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 Free Union, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (16.1%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (15.2%), and residents who report Irish roots (14.3%), and some of the residents are also of Scottish ancestry (5.3%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (3.7%), 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 30 and 45 minutes commuting one-way to work (44.7% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (68.9%) 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.
