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Place dossier plate
SheetWA-BAINBRIDGE-ISLAND-WA · Bainbridge Island, WA 24,607 pop · income 95th 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 Bainbridge Island
Lowest/highest poles plus peers nearest Bainbridge Island on median household income. Full ladder: /browse and /rankings.
median HH income
Selma · lowest
55,839
Selma · lowest
55,839 median HH income
27.6% of the leader · rank #1
Fairway · near
159,821
Fairway · near
159,821 median HH income
79.0% of the leader · rank #2
Bainbridge Is… · this city
159,882
Bainbridge Is… · this city
159,882 median HH income
79.0% of the leader · rank #3
Duane Lake · near
159,896
Duane Lake · near
159,896 median HH income
79.0% of the leader · rank #4
Burke Centre · near
159,932
Burke Centre · near
159,932 median HH income
79.0% of the leader · rank #5
Blue Bell · near
159,963
Blue Bell · near
159,963 median HH income
79.0% of the leader · rank #6
Mercer Island · highest
202,359
Mercer Island · highest
202,359 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 Bainbridge Island 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: 24,607.
Agency-reported UCR totals per 100,000 population, not a neighborhood safety grade or a prediction of personal risk.
Bainbridge Island - the verdict
Bainbridge Island ranks in the 95th percentile for household income and the 64th percentile for safety nationally, out of every US city with at least 1,000 residents. Source: Census ACS + FBI UCR.
95th
percentile, household income
98th
percentile, home value
70th
percentile, median rent
64th
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: Bainbridge Island, WA
Census ACS 2023 estimates count 24,607 residents in Bainbridge Island, a small city within Washington. Bainbridge Island households earn a median of $159,882 annually, placing it in the top quartile of U.S. cities for household income, with a poverty rate of 0.7%. Typical homes in Bainbridge Island are valued around $1,076,200, and the median resident age is 49.0 years. 75.0% of adults here have a bachelor's degree or higher; 56.3% of working-age residents are in the labor force.
Housing supply pressure shows in Census Building Permit Survey data: 43 residential units were authorized in 2024 (Construction Slowdown), down 54% from five years earlier. Bainbridge Island reports a comparatively low crime rate: FBI UCR reporting places total crime at 989.1 incidents per 100,000 residents, below the national average (voluntary agency reporting, reflects reporting activity, not a definitive danger score).
Washington carries a cost-of-living premium: BEA Regional Price Parities 2024 puts Washington at 107.0 on a 100-equals-national-average scale (Above Average). A typical two-bedroom carries a HUD Fair Market Rent of $1,472 per month statewide. Monthly utility costs average around $188 across Washington, per EIA 2023 residential energy estimates. On FEMA's National Risk Index, this area rates 70.0 out of 100 for natural-hazard exposure (High).
A decision-led reading path
Useful questions to ask of Bainbridge Island'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 schools and households to work and mobility to comparison shortlist to population change to housing and income to reported crime; another city can have a different sequence or fewer supported layers because the source joins are not uniform.
For Bainbridge Island, city-specific coverage includes matched public-school count, commute-mode shares, local building permits, annual population history, FBI reported-crime rates.
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
What does the education layer cover for Bainbridge Island?
The NCES join finds 10 public schools within the city match. 75.0% 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.
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.
What does the journey to work look like in Bainbridge Island?
Mode share answers how workers usually travel; it does not measure congestion, reliability, distance to a particular job, or the quality of transit service. Remote work has a visible role in the local pattern. That can reduce commute exposure for some workers, but it says nothing about job availability or broadband quality; read it alongside income and housing rather than as a stand-alone lifestyle score.
Driving alone is the largest reported mode at 37.5%. A reliable mean commute time is not available for this row, so the mode shares carry the comparison.
Which cities make useful reference points for Bainbridge Island?
Within Washington, the closest population matches are Oak Harbor (24,396 residents, $72,041 income); Frederickson (24,219 residents, $107,241 income); Mercer Island (25,282 residents, $202,359 income). Outside the state, the closest population matches in this dataset are Port St. John, FL (24,617 residents); Belton, MO (24,618 residents); Maywood, CA (24,593 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.
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.
Is Bainbridge Island growing, shrinking, or holding steady?
The recent population line is broadly flat. That makes the composition of change more important than the headline count: housing turnover, household size, and age structure can shift even when the total barely moves.
Census PEP estimates show the population declined by -143 residents from 2020 to 2025, a -0.6% change. Separately, Census BPS recorded 43 housing units authorized in 2024. PEP and ACS are different Census series, so the trend is kept separate from the headline ACS population.
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.
Housing and income
How far does income reach against housing in Bainbridge Island?
The home-value-to-income reference is comparatively stretched: the ACS median home value is 6.7 times median household income. The ACS poverty estimate is 0.7%, which keeps the citywide median from describing every household.
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. Housing value is high relative to the citywide income median. That flags a question for comparison, not a verdict: tenure, household composition, financing costs, and the age of the ACS estimate can all change what a resident actually pays.
Household income
$159,882
Home value
$1,076,200
Value / income
6.7×
City-level Census ACS 2023 medians. The ratio divides two separate medians and is descriptive only.
What can the FBI record say about safety in Bainbridge Island?
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.
The joined FBI UCR record reports 989.1 violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents, below the 2280.5 national reference used here. The difference is 57% lower in arithmetic terms, but agency participation is voluntary and reporting completeness varies.
Property rate
951.7
Violent rate
37.4
Total reported rate
989.1
FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, incidents per 100,000. Voluntary agency reporting; not a danger score.
Top-decile income · poverty 0.7% (Very low poverty)
Cost of Living Index (state)
107.0 (US=100)
High cost · BEA RPP 2024, Washington average
B+
City profile score · Bainbridge Island, WA
79/100
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 A+
75.0%
Adults with a bachelor's degree or higher; ACS.
Household income A+
$159,882
Median household income vs U.S. cities (pop ≥1,000); ACS.
Poverty rate A+
0.7%
Share of residents below the poverty line; lower scores better on this axis.
Violent crime A
37 /100k
FBI UCR violent offenses per 100,000 residents; lower is stronger on this axis.
Cost of living F
107.0 index
BEA state Regional Price Parities index (100 ≈ national average); lower is stronger on this axis. Same value for every city in the state.
Bainbridge Island profile (scored ACS/FBI dimensions)Read the chart values
Bachelor's+ share: 100/100 (A+) · 75.0%
Household income: 99/100 (A+) · $159,882
Poverty rate: 95/100 (A+) · 0.7%
Violent crime: 87/100 (A) · 37 /100k
Cost of living: 15/100 (F) · 107.0 index
Where Bainbridge Island sits on home value vs crime among peer cities
Bainbridge Island'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 - Bainbridge Island highlighted among 8 peers.Read the chart values
Bainbridge Island, WA (this city): home $1,076,200, crime 989/100k
Belton, MO : home $185,400, crime 2,207/100k
Maywood, CA : home $595,000, crime 1,921/100k
Wyandotte, MI : home $159,700, crime 1,064/100k
Selma, CA : home $288,700, crime 2,172/100k
Oak Harbor, WA : home $421,700, crime 991/100k
Mercer Island, WA : home $1,884,200, crime 1,278/100k
Moses Lake, WA : home $278,100, crime 4,631/100k
How does Bainbridge Island compare to other US cities?
Bainbridge Island measured against every US city with 1,000+ residents, computed live from the same Census and FBI data shown throughout this page.
Household income95% higher than other cities
Home value98% pricier than other cities
Median rent70% pricier than other cities
Safety64% safer than other cities
"Safer than" reflects total crime rate from FBI UCR; the others use Census ACS estimates.
A national percentile can hide a lot of local variation: narrowed to Washington alone, Bainbridge Island ranks #32 of 156 Washington cities by lowest crime rate - a different, more locally useful comparison than stacking it against the entire country.
How we calculate these percentiles & ranks
Each percentile compares Bainbridge Island against every qualifying US city; each in-state rank narrows that to Washington only. Full formula and direction notes: methodology.
Washington-relative analysis
Median Gross Rent places Bainbridge Island near the bottom of Washington's cities
Among the 599 Washington cities PlainCities tracks with reported median gross rent data, Bainbridge Island ranks #1 - the 0th percentile within the state. This is a different, narrower cut than the nationwide percentiles above: it compares Bainbridge Island only against its own state's cities, not the full US field.
Median Household Income
#30 of 565
95th percentile in Washington
Median Gross Rent
#1 of 599
0th percentile in Washington
Median Home Value
#15 of 565
97th percentile in Washington
Poverty Rate
#483 of 598
19th percentile in Washington
Bachelor's Degree or Higher
#7 of 599
99th percentile in Washington
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 Washington only, not a livability score. See the methodology for the source and calculation.
Gauge source note
95th percentile nationally for median household income · 64th percentile for safety (lower crime rate). Source: Census ACS 2023 / FBI UCR 2023.
Bainbridge Island's profile vs. every US city
Income, affordability, and safety percentile
Bainbridge Island'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 Bainbridge Island's home value compares nationally
Median home value vs. every US city (population 1,000+)
$1,076,2002nd percentilemore affordable than 2% 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
ACS median home value divided by median household income.
Band
pressured
> 5.0×
National rank
#14,551 of 15,516
More affordable than 6% of tracked cities (pop. 1,000+)
Size class
#3,078 of 3,317
Small cities (10,000–49,999)
At 6.7×, Bainbridge Island sits in the pressured band:
national rank #14,551 of 15,516 and #3,078 of 3,317small cities (10,000–49,999).
Housing value is high relative to the citywide income median, a comparison flag, not a verdict on any household.
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
$159,882Bainbridge Island, WA median household income (Census ACS)
Show U.S. national quintile / Lorenz context Bainbridge Island, WA median household income (Census ACS 5-year) with U.S. national quintile shares for context. Diagonal = equality; the curve is national, not computed for Bainbridge Island, WA.
Key socioeconomic indicators
Bachelor's degree or higher (adults 25+)75.0%
Census ACS S1501, educational attainment
Poverty rate (households below FPL)0.7%
Census ACS S1701, poverty status
Labor force participation (adults 16+)56.3%
Census ACS S2301, share of working-age residents in the labor force
Population
24,607
Median Income
$159,882
Median Home Value
$1,076,200
Median Age
49.0
Poverty Rate
0.7%
Labor force participation
56.3%
Bachelor's Degree+
75.0%
Safety & Crime
Total Crime Rate
989.1
per 100,000 residents
Violent Crime
37.4
per 100,000 residents
Property Crime
951.7
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
10
Public schools in this city
Population Change
PEP vintage
Annual U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (PEP) estimates, 2020–2025
Bainbridge Island's Census PEP population estimates, 2020–2025.Read the chart as text
Period
Population
2020
24,834 residents
2021
24,722 residents
2022
24,596 residents
2023
24,370 residents
2024
24,557 residents
2025
24,691 residents
Housing Supply
BPS source
Census Bureau Building Permits Survey (BPS) - annual residential permits authorized
📉 Construction Slowdown
Total Permits (2024)
43
housing units authorized
Single-Family
43
detached homes
Multifamily
0
apartments & condos
Supply Intensity
1.7
permits per 1,000 residents
5-Year Permit Trend (2019–2024)
Year
Total
Single-Family
Multifamily
Est. Value
2019
94
94
0
$41.6M
2020
86
86
0
$37.9M
2021
93
61
32
$37.1M
2022
52
38
14
$25.9M
2023
145
68
77
$35.8M
2024
43
43
0
$29.8M
Permit volume decreased 54% from 2019 to 2024.
Commute Patterns
Commute source
How workers travel to work, Census ACS 2023
Drive Alone
37.5%
Carpool
4.1%
Public Transit
17.8%
Walk
4.7%
Work from Home
33.7%
Other
2.2%
Based on 11,222 workers 16 and over.
Monthly Utility Costs
Washington statewide monthly utility average (EIA 2023): $188
EIA 2023 residential energy data puts average monthly utilities across Washington at $188 (electricity about $85 , water and sewer about $55 ).
These are Washington statewide averages, not a meter reading for Bainbridge Island. Actual bills vary by home size, usage, and local rates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2023.
Living Costs & Risk
Washington's BEA cost-of-living index is 107.0 (Above Average; US average = 100, RPP 2024). HUD Fair Market Rent for a typical two-bedroom in the county around Bainbridge Island is $1,472/mo. FEMA's National Risk Index, averaged to Washington statewide on PlainCities, rates natural-hazard exposure at 70.0 / 100 (High).
Cost/risk geography note
Cost of living is a Washington statewide BEA average; rent is a county-level HUD Fair Market Rent for the county Bainbridge Island sits in; the FEMA hazard score shown here is a statewide average of county NRI inputs, not a parcel-level reading.
How Bainbridge Island compares to similar-size Washington 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.