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.
Topping is a very small town located in the state of Virginia. With a population of 2,734 people and just one neighborhood, Topping is the 194th largest community in Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns where white-collar or blue-collar occupations dominate the local economy, Topping is neither predominantly one nor the other. Instead, it has a mixed workforce of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Topping is a town of sales and office workers, professionals, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Topping who work in sales jobs (16.68%), office and administrative support (14.04%), and teaching (11.80%).
Also of interest is that Topping has more people living here who work in computers and math than 95% of the places in the US.
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 17.52% 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
Residents will find that the town is relatively quiet. This is because it is not over-populated, and it has fewer college students, renters, and young children - all of whom can be noisy at times. So, if you're looking for a relatively peaceful place to live, Topping is worth considering.
Being a small town, Topping does not have a public transit system used by locals to get to and from work.
Demographics
In terms of college education, Topping is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 31.15% of adults in Topping have a college degree.
The per capita income in Topping in 2022 was $36,659, which is middle income relative to Virginia, and upper middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $146,636 for a family of four. However, Topping contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Topping is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Topping home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Topping residents report their race to be White, followed by Black or African-American. Important ancestries of people in Topping include English, German, Irish, Scots-Irish, and Italian.
The most common language spoken in Topping is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and Chinese.
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
One of the notable things about is that it is one of the quietest neighborhoods in America, according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis and quantitative rating of quietness. When you are here, you will find it to be very quiet. If quiet and peaceful are your cup of tea, you may have found a great place for you.
In addition, real estate in the neighborhood is almost exclusively owner-occupied. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher rate of owner-occupied housing than is found in 95.5% of U.S. neighborhoods. If you are seeking to rent, this neighborhood may not have many options, but high rates of ownership often indicate stability in a neighborhood. Vacant homes and apartments are a significant characteristic of this neighborhood. In fact, with 31.3% of the residential real estate vacant, the neighborhood claims the distinction of having a higher vacancy rate than 95.2% of the neighborhoods in America. This can either be because much of the property is seasonally occupied, like in many vacation areas, or that much of the real estate is more permanently abandoned.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Scots-Irish and Yugoslav ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 6.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Scots-Irish ancestry and 0.5% have Yugoslav 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 Topping are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 42.7% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.6% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.3% 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, 41.6% 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 28.7% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (14.8%), and 14.0% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.3% of households. Some people also speak Italian (4.6%).
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 Topping, VA, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (20.0%). There are also a number of people of German ancestry (12.1%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.0%), and some of the residents are also of Scots-Irish ancestry (6.3%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (4.0%), 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 (45.1% 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 (5.1%) . 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.
