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Place dossier plate
SheetNY-BUFFALO-NY · Buffalo, NY 276,397 pop · income 17th pct · 261 tracts
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 Buffalo
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Buffalo on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Syracuse · lowest
45,845
Syracuse · lowest
45,845 median HH income
37.8% of the leader · rank #1
McAlester · near
48,044
McAlester · near
48,044 median HH income
39.6% of the leader · rank #2
Buffalo · this city
48,050
Buffalo · this city
48,050 median HH income
39.6% of the leader · rank #3
Kwethluk · near
48,056
Kwethluk · near
48,056 median HH income
39.6% of the leader · rank #4
Julesburg · near
48,056
Julesburg · near
48,056 median HH income
39.6% of the leader · rank #5
Tipton · near
48,056
Tipton · near
48,056 median HH income
39.6% of the leader · rank #6
Gilbert · highest
121,351
Gilbert · highest
121,351 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 Buffalo 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: 276,397.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Buffalo - the verdict
Nationally, Buffalo sits in the 17th percentile for household income and the 5th percentile for safety among US cities with a population of 1,000 or more. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
17th
percentile, household income
28th
percentile, home value
78th
percentile, median rent
5th
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: Buffalo, NY
Buffalo is a mid-sized U.S. city in New York, home to 276,397 residents per U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023 estimates. Median household income here is $48,050 per year, in the lower quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 22.3%. Typical homes in Buffalo are valued around $152,300, and the median resident age is 34.3 years. About 30.3% of adults hold a bachelor's degree or higher, while 55.5% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 183 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Construction Slowdown), down 37% from five years earlier. Buffalo's reported crime rate runs above the national norm: per-100,000 total crime stands at 4515.8 in FBI UCR data, above the national average (a voluntary reporting program, read this as reporting activity, not a definitive danger score). NOAA puts Buffalo's yearly average temperature at 48.8°F with 40.7 inches of precipitation per year and 95.4 inches of snowfall.
New York carries a cost-of-living premium: the state registers 107.9 on a 100-equals-national-average index (Above Average) per BEA Regional Price Parities 2024. A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,579 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $285 across New York, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. On FEMA's National Risk Index, this area rates 69.4 out of 100 for natural-hazard exposure (Moderate).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Buffalo'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 housing and income to climate and hazard context to reported crime to within-city variation to schools and households to comparison shortlist to work and mobility to population change; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Buffalo, city-specific coverage includes annual population history, within-city Census tract profiles, matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, FBI reported-crime rates, local building permits.
All six city-specific enrichment layers used by this profile are present.
1. Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Buffalo?
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. Income and home value move within the same broad scale here. The useful next check is not a generic affordability label, but whether similar-size cities offer a materially different income, housing, or commute trade-off.
The home-value-to-income reference sits in a middle range: the ACS median home value is 3.2 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 22.3%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
The two sources should not be blended into one comfort or safety score. Use the climate values for baseline conditions and the risk index as a prompt to inspect specific hazards, insurance, and local emergency guidance for a particular address.
NOAA normals put the annual mean temperature at 48.8°F, with 40.7 inches of precipitation and 95.4 inches of annual snowfall. FEMA's state-averaged National Risk Index score for New York is 69.4 out of 100. Climate normals describe long-run weather; the FEMA score on PlainCities is a state average of county NRI inputs and combines hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and resilience.
PlainCities matches 261 Census tracts to this city.
That layer breaks the citywide income, rent, and home-value medians into smaller Census geographies, which can reveal differences that one municipal median necessarily hides. A tract is a statistical area, not a locally defined neighborhood or a promise about conditions on a particular block. Start with the city profile for the broad comparison, then use the tract layer to test whether the same housing and income pattern is consistent across the city. Large within-city spreads are a reason to avoid treating any citywide median as a universal resident experience.
Which cities make useful reference points for Buffalo?
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 New York, the closest population matches are Rochester (209,720 residents, $46,628 income); Yonkers (209,529 residents, $81,816 income); Syracuse (146,211 residents, $45,845 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Madison, WI (275,568 residents); Chula Vista, CA (275,030 residents); Chandler, AZ (278,123 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.
Reported crime
What can the FBI record say about safety in Buffalo?
The joined FBI UCR record reports 4515.8 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, above the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 98% 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
4515.8
Violent rate
706.2
Property rate
3809.6
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
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 87 public schools within the city match. 30.3% 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
22.3%
Bachelor's degree+
30.3%
Matched public schools
87
NCES Common Core of Data school locations plus Census ACS resident characteristics.
What does the journey to work look like in Buffalo?
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 64.5%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
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.
Drive alone
64.5%
Work from home
9.6%
Public transit
8.5%
City-level Census ACS commuting estimates covering 119,488 workers age 16+.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -3,137 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -1.1% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 183 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.
2020 estimate
277,750
2025 estimate
274,613
Period change
-1.1%
Census Population Estimates Program, 2020–2025; permit context uses Census BPS.
Low income · poverty 22.3% (Highest-decile poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
107.9 (US=100)
High cost · BEA RPP 2024, New York average
F
City profile score · Buffalo, NY
18/100
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.
Bachelor's+ share C
30.3%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Household income F
$48,050
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Cost of living F
107.9 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Poverty rate F
22.3%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Violent crime F
706 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Buffalo profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 58/100 (C) · 30.3%
Household income: 18/100 (F) · $48,050
Cost of living: 12/100 (F) · 107.9 index
Poverty rate: 9/100 (F) · 22.3%
Violent crime: 5/100 (F) · 706 /100k
Where Buffalo sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Buffalo'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 - Buffalo highlighted among 12 peers.Read the chart values
Buffalo, NY (this city): home $152,300, crime 4,516/100k
Madison, WI : home $346,900, crime 2,121/100k
Chula Vista, CA : home $697,400, crime 1,508/100k
Chandler, AZ : home $469,800, crime 1,638/100k
Gilbert, AZ : home $518,600, crime 1,100/100k
North Las Vegas, NV : home $372,300, crime 2,350/100k
Reno, NV : home $498,600, crime 2,975/100k
Rochester, NY : home $120,600, crime 3,872/100k
Yonkers, NY : home $478,000, crime 1,327/100k
Syracuse, NY : home $125,100, crime 5,000/100k
Albany, NY : home $223,000, crime 3,665/100k
New Rochelle, NY : home $667,300, crime 1,239/100k
How does Buffalo compare to other US cities?
Where Buffalo sits among all US cities (population 1,000+) on each measure, computed live from Census and FBI data.
Household income17% higher than other cities
Home value28% pricier than other cities
Median rent78% pricier than other cities
Safety5% 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 New York, Buffalo ranks #51 of 55 New York 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 Buffalo against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to New York only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
New York-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Buffalo near the bottom of New York's cities
Among the 1,256 New York cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Buffalo ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Buffalo only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#1,116 of 1,205
7th percentile in New York
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 1,256
0th percentile in New York
Median Home Value
#857 of 1,202
29th percentile in New York
Poverty Rate
#63 of 1,246
95th percentile in New York
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#688 of 1,254
45th percentile in New York
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 New York only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
17th percentile nationally for median household income · 5th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Buffalo's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Buffalo'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 Buffalo's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$152,300Among the most affordablemore affordable than 72% 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
Buffalo's home-value-to-income ratio: 3.2×
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
moderate
3.0–5.0×
National rank
#7,542 of 15,516
More affordable than 51% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#17 of 117
Large cities (200,000–999,999)
At 3.2×, Buffalo sits in the moderate band:
national rank #7,542 of 15,516 and #17 of 117large cities (200,000–999,999).
Income and home value move in the same broad scale; check same-state peers before treating the multiple as an advantage or a warning.
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
$48,050Buffalo, NY median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Buffalo, NY median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Buffalo, NY.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)30.3%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)22.3%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)55.5%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
276,397
Median Income
$48,050
Median Home Value
$152,300
Median Age
34.3
Poverty Rate
22.3%
Labor force participation
55.5%
Bachelor's Degree+
30.3%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
4515.8
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
706.2
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
3809.6
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.
Climate
Avg Temperature
48.8°F
Annual Precipitation
40.7"
Annual Snowfall
95.4"
Schools
Total Schools
87
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Buffalo's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
277,750 residents
2021
277,593 residents
2022
276,251 residents
2023
275,772 residents
2024
275,322 residents
2025
274,613 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📉 Construction Slowdown
Total Permits (2024)
183
housing units authorized
Single-Family
31
detached homes
Multifamily
152
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
0.7
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
291
29
262
$63.1M
2020
240
30
210
$51.6M
2021
292
35
257
$62.9M
2022
245
34
211
$52.4M
2023
173
29
144
$36.7M
2024
183
31
152
$38.7M
Permit volume decreased 37% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
64.5%
Carpool
9.9%
Public Transit
8.5%
Walk
4.7%
Work from Home
9.6%
Other
2.8%
Based on 119,488 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
New York statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $285
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across New York at $285 (electricity about $130 , water and sewer about $65 ).
These are New York statewide averages, not a meter reading for Buffalo. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
New York's BEA cost-of-living index is 107.9 (Above Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Buffalo is $1,579/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to New York statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 69.4 / 100 (Moderate).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a New York statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Buffalo sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Buffalo compares to similar-size New York 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, NOAA Climate Normals, 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.