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.
Alma is a very small town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 1,660 people and just one neighborhood, Alma is the 119th largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
Unlike some towns, Alma isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Alma are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Alma is a town of service providers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Alma who work in teaching (20.73%), healthcare suport services (15.41%), and sales jobs (11.40%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Overall, Alma’s crime rate is one of the lowest in the nation, which makes a great place to live if safety is an important concern.
It is a fairly quiet town because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Alma has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Alma has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Alma than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Alma may be for you.
In Alma, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 39.09 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Alma is a small town, and as such doesn't have a public transit system that people use to get to and from their jobs every day.
Demographics
The citizens of Alma are slightly less educated than the national average of 21.84% for the average city or town: 16.50% of adults in Alma have a bachelor's degree or advanced degree
The per capita income in Alma in 2022 was $27,391, which is middle income relative to West Virginia, and lower middle income relative to the rest of the US. This equates to an annual income of $109,564 for a family of four. However, Alma contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Alma home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Alma residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Alma include English, Irish, German, Dutch, and European.
The most common language spoken in Alma is English. Other important languages spoken here include Italian and German/Yiddish.
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
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 12 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 96.5% of America. 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 95.0% 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. Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 41.2%, which is higher than 97.7% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
People
The neighborhood is a great option for families, as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's research on this neighborhood. The combination of top public schools, low crime rates, and owner-occupied single family homes, make this neighborhood among the top 5.1% of family-friendly neighborhoods in the state of West Virginia. Many other families also live here, making it easy to socialize and develop a sense of community. In addition, families here highly value education, as is reflected by the strength of the local schools.
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 Alma are lower-middle income, making it a below average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 65.2% of U.S. neighborhoods. In addition, 6.7% 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 59.6% 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, 28.1% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations, with 26.4% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (23.3%), and 22.2% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.5% of households. Some people also speak Italian (2.1%).
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Boston's Beacon Hill blue-blood streets, Brooklyn's Orthodox Jewish enclaves, Los Angeles' Persian neighborhoods. Each has its own culture derived primarily from the ancestries and culture of the residents who call these neighborhoods home. Likewise, each neighborhood in America has its own culture – some more unique than others – based on lifestyle, occupations, the types of households – and importantly – on the ethnicities and ancestries of the people who live in the neighborhood. Understanding where people came from, who their grandparents or great-grandparents were, can help you understand how a neighborhood is today.
In the neighborhood in Alma, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (10.2%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (9.4%), and residents who report German roots (8.3%), and some of the residents are also of Dutch ancestry (3.2%), along with some Polish ancestry residents (1.2%), 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 (48.9% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (82.1%) 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 (11.2%) . 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.
