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?
Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ® 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. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ 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.
Raysal is a tiny town located in the state of West Virginia. With a population of 364 people and just one neighborhood, Raysal is the 222nd largest community in West Virginia.
Occupations and Workforce
When you are in Raysal, you'll notice that it is more blue-collar than most other communities in America. 74.44% of Raysal’s employed work in blue-collar jobs, while America averages only 27.7% that do. Overall, Raysal is a town of transportation and shipping workers, construction workers and builders, and managers. There are especially a lot of people living in Raysal who work in management occupations (13.33%), law enforcement and fire fighting (12.22%), and office and administrative support (0.00%).
Setting & Lifestyle
Raysal’s overall crime rate ranks among the lowest in the nation, making it a very safe place to live.
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, Raysal has relatively fewer families with younger children, and/or college students. Combined, this makes Raysal a pretty quiet place to live overall. If you like quiet, you will probably enjoy it here.
One downside of living in Raysal is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Raysal, the average commute to work is 50.50 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
Raysal 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 Raysal 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. Raysal has a lot of rural roads, and houses can be far apart. Many residents drive out of town for regular shopping trips as well.
Raysal 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 population of Raysal has one of the lowest overall levels of education in the country: only 0.00% of people over 25 hold a college degree. The national average for all municipalities is 21.84%.
The per capita income in Raysal in 2022 was $26,163, 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 $104,652 for a family of four. However, Raysal contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Raysal home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Raysal residents report their race to be White. Important ancestries of people in Raysal include Italian, German, Irish, Yugoslavian, and Other West Indian.
The most common language spoken in Raysal is English. Other important languages spoken here include African languages and Arabic.
Notable & Unique Neighborhood Characteristics
Many things matter about a neighborhood, but the first thing most people notice is the way a neighborhood looks and its particular character. For example, one might notice whether the buildings all date from a certain time period or whether shop signs are in multiple languages. This particular neighborhood in Raysal, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
Occupations
From major sales accounts to fast-food workers, sales and service employees are often the backbone of the local economy. In the neighborhood, they truly stand out. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's exclusive analysis identifies this neighborhood as having a higher percentage of sales and service workers than 98.4% of all American neighborhoods.
People
Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's exclusive research revealed that 94.7% of the adult residents in the neighborhood do not have a 4-year college degree, which is a lower rate of college graduated adults than found in 97.1% of the neighborhoods in America.
Real Estate
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 95.6% 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.
Migration / Stability
Some neighborhoods have more internal cohesiveness than others. While other neighborhoods feel like a collection of strangers who just happen to live near each other. Sometimes this comes down to not only the personalities of the people in a place, but how long people have been together in that neighborhood. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's research has revealed some interesting things about the rootedness of people in the neighborhood. More residents of the neighborhood live here today that also were living in this same neighborhood five years ago than is found in 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. This neighborhood is really made up of people who know each other, don't move often, and have lived here in this very neighborhood for quite a while.
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. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Raysal are low income, making it among the lowest income neighborhoods in America. Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ's research shows that this neighborhood has an income lower than 100.0% of U.S. neighborhoods. With 12.8% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 56.6% of U.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, 43.8% of the working population is employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is executive, management, and professional occupations, with 29.2% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations (16.6%), and 10.3% in manufacturing and laborer occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 100.0% of households.
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 Raysal, WV, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (5.6%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (4.0%), and residents who report English roots (1.9%).
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 45 minutes and one hour commuting one-way to work (46.2% of working residents), longer and tougher than most commutes in America.
Here most residents (84.6%) 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.
