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Place dossier plate
SheetNC-SPRING-LAKE-NC · Spring Lake, NC 11,613 pop · income 20th pct
Instrument codes from this place’s ACS population and household income, BEA state COL, FBI safety, national income percentile, photo-finish peer city, home-value band, and matched Census-tract book - not a moving recommendation.
Income neighbourhood around Spring Lake
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Spring Lake on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Smithfield · lowest
37,827
Smithfield · lowest
37,827 median HH income
16.0% of the leader · rank #1
Spring Lake · this city
50,497
Spring Lake · this city
50,497 median HH income
21.3% of the leader · rank #2
Alma · near
50,500
Alma · near
50,500 median HH income
21.3% of the leader · rank #3
De Land · near
50,500
De Land · near
50,500 median HH income
21.3% of the leader · rank #4
Hettick · near
50,500
Hettick · near
50,500 median HH income
21.3% of the leader · rank #5
West Salem · near
50,500
West Salem · near
50,500 median HH income
21.3% of the leader · rank #6
Town and Coun… · highest
237,083
Town and Coun… · highest
237,083 median HH income
100.0% of the leader · rank #7
What this shows Neighbourhood peers only - not a full nationwide city board. Open a near peer when the gap is small; open the poles when the spread is wide.
Compare beyond this state
Nationwide peers by population, income, and FBI crime rate
Out-of-state nearest neighbors for Spring Lake on ACS population and median household income
, plus FBI UCR reporting rate when the extract covers this place. Link sets are deduped so each column is a distinct comparison path, not a forecast that peers share a labor market or climate.
Similar population
Nearest out-of-state cities by ACS population. This city: 11,613.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Spring Lake - the verdict
Nationally, Spring Lake sits in the 20th percentile for household income and the 8th percentile for safety among US cities with a population of 1,000 or more. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
20th
percentile, household income
10th
percentile, home value
48th
percentile, median rent
8th
percentile, safety
📝 How we sourced this
Population, income, and housing-cost figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates (B-series tables). Crime data uses FBI UCR; climate uses NOAA Climate Normals; school counts come from NCES Common Core of Data; permits use the Census Building Permits Survey (BPS). See our methodology page for the full ETL pipeline and OMB / FIPS join keys.
Data Snapshot: Spring Lake, NC
Spring Lake is a small town in North Carolina, home to 11,613 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Median household income here is $50,497 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 18.6%. Home values in Spring Lake run a median of $101,300, and the median resident age is 25.4 years. Educational attainment runs 24.8% of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher. Separately, 39.6% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
In 2024, 67 residential building permits were authorized in Spring Lake (Building Boom), up 1240% from five years earlier, per Census BPS data. Spring Lake's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: FBI UCR figures show 3918.3 crimes per 100,000 residents, above the national average (reporting is voluntary across agencies, so treat this as reporting activity rather than a definitive danger score).
Living costs in North Carolina run below the national norm: the state registers 94.3 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Below Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. Statewide, HUD pegs Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom unit at $1,161 monthly. Monthly utility costs average around $215 across North Carolina, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. Workers in Spring Lake report an average commute of 19.0 minutes, with 73.9% driving alone and 3.4% working from home. Natural-hazard exposure scores 66.7 out of 100 on FEMA's National Risk Index (Moderate).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Spring Lake's data
How this reading path is ordered
This is not a composite city score. It is a city-specific route through the available public records, ordered for this profile so the page starts with questions the joined data can actually answer. The route here runs from population change to housing and income to work and mobility to schools and households to comparison shortlist to reported crime; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Spring Lake, city-specific coverage includes local building permits, FBI reported-crime rates, annual population history, commute-mode shares, matched public-school count.
No matched row is reported here for within-city Census tract profiles; the page leaves those layers out instead of substituting a statewide or national value.
Question 1
Is Spring Lake growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -265 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -2.3% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 67 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
Recent estimates point downward. A falling count can reflect migration, household size, annexation boundaries, or estimation noise, so it is a prompt to inspect the full series rather than a claim about local economic health.
How far does income reach against housing in Spring Lake?
This is a citywide price-to-income reference, not a mortgage-affordability test; it does not include interest rates, taxes, insurance, household size, or an individual buyer's down payment. The ratio makes housing the clearest place to start this profile, but a low multiple can coexist with slow demand, older stock, or household-level hardship. Compare the home-value distribution and same-state peer table before treating it as an advantage.
The home-value-to-income reference is relatively compact: the ACS median home value is 2.0 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 18.6%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
What does the journey to work look like in Spring Lake?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 73.9%. The reported mean trip to work is 19.0 minutes.
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. No single mode completely explains the work trip here. The mix is more useful than a one-number commute grade, especially when comparing places where transit, walking, and remote work divide the non-driving share differently.
Which cities make useful reference points for Spring Lake?
Use the in-state set to hold state policy and broad price conditions more nearly constant. Use the nationwide size set to ask whether cities with a similar resident count produce different housing, income, or commute outcomes. The income set is a third lens, deliberately separate from population matching. The nationwide peer panel below adds a fourth FBI UCR reporting-rate lens, not personal risk.
Within North Carolina, the closest population matches are Wendell (11,585 residents, $93,848 income); Lincolnton (11,503 residents, $43,294 income); Kings Mountain (11,472 residents, $45,507 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Yorktown, IN (11,617 residents); Alum Rock, CA (11,619 residents); Bucyrus, OH (11,619 residents). A third, income-matched reference set of 6 out-of-state cities sits in the income neighbourhood chart near the Place Dossier plate. These are mechanical peer sets, not claims that the places share a labor market, climate, culture, or metro context.
These joined records add useful context, but they do not need another full-size panel. Each remains a separate measure with its own geography and source boundary.
Schools and households
What does the education layer cover for Spring Lake?
The city has a broader matched school footprint, but count alone does not describe performance, capacity, program availability, or attendance boundaries. This profile deliberately avoids converting it into an unsupported family-friendliness score.
The NCES join finds 7 public schools within the city match. 24.8% of adults age 25+ hold a bachelor's degree or higher in the ACS estimate. These measures answer different questions: the school count describes local institutions, while adult attainment describes residents and cannot be used as a school-quality rating.
Poverty estimate
18.6%
Bachelor's degree+
24.8%
Matched public schools
7
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Spring Lake?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 3918.3 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 72% higher in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Treat this as a reporting-rate comparison, not a prediction of personal risk or a neighborhood-level safety grade. Tourism, daytime population, reporting practices, and variation inside the city are not adjusted away. The state rank and same-state peer table are the narrower comparisons available on this page.
Total reported rate
3918.3
Violent rate
541.1
Property rate
3377.3
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Near national cost · BEA RPP 2024, North Carolina average
F
City profile score · Spring Lake, NC
32/100
5 published dimensions · ACS/FBI 2023
Comparative score against U.S. cities with population of 1,000 or more on Census ACS medians
(income, poverty, bachelor's share, cost of living) and FBI UCR violent-crime rates when
published. Higher means a stronger standing on those published figures, not a livability
rating, not a recommendation to move, buy, or pick a "best" city. Missing inputs drop out
and redistribute weight.
How it is calculated.
Cost of living B-
94.3 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Bachelor's+ share D
24.8%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Household income F
$50,497
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate F
18.6%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Violent crime F
541 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Spring Lake profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Cost of living: 67/100 (B-) · 94.3 index
Bachelor's+ share: 48/100 (D) · 24.8%
Household income: 21/100 (F) · $50,497
Poverty rate: 16/100 (F) · 18.6%
Violent crime: 13/100 (F) · 541 /100k
Where Spring Lake sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Spring Lake's median home value and FBI crime rate plotted with similar-size and
same-state peers (padded with large cities when the peer set is thin). The second
read: pricey does not always mean safer, check which quadrant this city lands in.
Census ACS median home value vs FBI UCR crime rate - Spring Lake highlighted among 11 peers.Read the chart values
Spring Lake, NC (this city): home $101,300, crime 3,918/100k
Yorktown, IN : home $182,000, crime 271/100k
Bucyrus, OH : home $122,000, crime 1,488/100k
Bethel, CT : home $377,500, crime 539/100k
Town and Country, MO : home $895,000, crime 1,267/100k
Wendell, NC : home $316,700, crime 1,210/100k
Lincolnton, NC : home $224,600, crime 2,484/100k
Kings Mountain, NC : home $177,700, crime 2,914/100k
Smithfield, NC : home $217,000, crime 4,054/100k
Elon, NC : home $355,800, crime 388/100k
Archdale, NC : home $188,200, crime 1,227/100k
How does Spring Lake compare to other US cities?
Here's how Spring Lake stacks up against the full field of US cities (population 1,000+), computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income20% higher than other cities
Home value10% pricier than other cities
Median rent48% pricier than other cities
Safety8% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
National percentiles can mask local variation. Looking only at North Carolina, Spring Lake ranks #152 of 195 North Carolina cities by lowest crime rate - a narrower, more locally useful cut than the national comparison above.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Spring Lake against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to North Carolina only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
North Carolina-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Spring Lake near the bottom of North Carolina's cities
Among the 746 North Carolina cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Spring Lake ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Spring Lake only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#462 of 700
34th percentile in North Carolina
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 746
0th percentile in North Carolina
Median Home Value
#626 of 708
12th percentile in North Carolina
Poverty Rate
#164 of 746
78th percentile in North Carolina
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#303 of 746
59th percentile in North Carolina
How in-state ranks are ordered
Ranked by raw value (highest first); a higher rank is not automatically "better" for every measure, see each metric's own context above. This is a comparison within North Carolina only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
20th percentile nationally for median household income · 8th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Spring Lake's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Spring Lake's percentile rank on 3 favorable-direction measures (income, affordability, safety) vs. every tracked US city -- higher on every axis is more favorable. Not a composite quality score, just the arithmetic mean of the axes shown.
How Spring Lake's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$101,300Among the most affordablemore affordable than 90% of 15,600 US cities
Show national distribution
Each bar is a $25K-wide band; taller bars hold more US cities. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count, share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year Estimates · 2023
Spring Lake's home-value-to-income ratio: 2.0×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
affordable
< 3.0×
National rank
#1,646 of 15,516
More affordable than 89% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#65 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 2.0×, Spring Lake sits in the affordable band:
national rank #1,646 of 15,516 and #65 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
The multiple is comparatively compact among tracked cities, but a low ratio can still coexist with slow demand or household-level hardship.
How this ratio is calculated
Ratio = Census ACS 2023 median home value ÷ median household income for cities with both fields and population ≥ 1,000.
Rank 1 = lowest ratio (most compact). Bands match the fleet affordability thresholds used on guides (<3.0 / 3.0–5.0 / >5.0).
This is not a mortgage payment estimate and does not include rates, taxes, insurance, or down payment.
Income distribution context
$50,497Spring Lake, NC median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Spring Lake, NC median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Spring Lake, NC.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)24.8%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)18.6%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)39.6%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
11,613
Median Income
$50,497
Median Home Value
$101,300
Median Age
25.4
Poverty Rate
18.6%
Labor force participation
39.6%
Bachelor's Degree+
24.8%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
3918.3
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
541.1
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
3377.3
per 100,000 residents
Crime reporting caveat
Reflects incidents reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies by jurisdiction and year, so this reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score. Not adjusted for tourism, commuter, or daytime population.
Schools
Total Schools
7
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Spring Lake's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
11,517 residents
2021
11,516 residents
2022
11,285 residents
2023
11,222 residents
2024
11,174 residents
2025
11,252 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📈 Building Boom
Total Permits (2024)
67
housing units authorized
Single-Family
33
detached homes
Multifamily
34
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
5.8
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
5
5
0
$1.0M
2020
3
3
0
$0.5M
2021
5
5
0
$0.7M
2022
1
1
0
$0.4M
2023
46
16
30
$5.6M
2024
67
33
34
$9.3M
Permit volume increased 1240% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Average Commute Time
19.0 minutes
Drive Alone
73.9%
Carpool
13.8%
Public Transit
0.9%
Walk
7.0%
Work from Home
3.4%
Other
1.0%
Based on 5,633 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
North Carolina statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $215
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across North Carolina at $215 (electricity about $115 , water and sewer about $45 ).
These are North Carolina statewide averages, not a meter reading for Spring Lake. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
North Carolina's BEA cost-of-living index is 94.3 (Below Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Spring Lake is $1,161/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to North Carolina statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 66.7 / 100 (Moderate).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a North Carolina statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Spring Lake sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Spring Lake compares to similar-size North Carolina cities
Same-state peer method
Closest same-state population matches, not geographic neighbors. Population + median household income come from Census Bureau ACS 5-year B01001 and B19013.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-Year 2023, FBI UCR, NCES CCD, Census BPS 2024, Census ACS B08301/B08136, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023, BEA Regional Price Parities 2024, HUD Fair Market Rents 2026, FEMA National Risk Index.