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.
Mercer - Starks is a very small town located in the state of Maine. With a population of 2,276 people and just one neighborhood, Mercer - Starks is the 203rd largest community in Maine.
Occupations and Workforce
Mercer - Starks is neither predominantly blue-collar nor white-collar, instead having a mixed workforce of both blue-collar and white-collar jobs. Overall, Mercer - Starks is a town of professionals, sales and office workers, and construction workers and builders. There are especially a lot of people living in Mercer - Starks who work in healthcare (13.70%), office and administrative support (9.52%), and management occupations (7.48%).
A relatively large number of people in Mercer - Starks telecommute to their jobs. Overall, about 13.11% of the workforce works from home. While this may seem like a small number, as a fraction of the total workforce it ranks among the highest in the country. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Setting & Lifestyle
Another notable thing is that Mercer - Starks is an extremely popular vacation destination. A significant portion of the population is seasonal. During the vacation season, the town experiences a large influx of people who take up residence in second homes they own in the area. As the vacation season ends, the population drops again, leaving behind a substantially quieter and smaller town.
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!) Mercer - Starks 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. Mercer - Starks has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Mercer - Starks than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Mercer - Starks may be for you.
One downside of living in Mercer - Starks is that it can take a long time to commute to work. In Mercer - Starks, the average commute to work is 31.96 minutes, which is quite a bit higher than the national average.
As is often the case in a small town, Mercer - Starks doesn't have a public transportation system that people use for their commute.
Demographics
In terms of college education, Mercer - Starks is substantially better educated than the typical community in the nation, which has 21.84% of the adults holding a bachelor's degree or graduate degree: 29.66% of adults in Mercer - Starks have a college degree.
The per capita income in Mercer - Starks in 2022 was $41,851, which is upper middle income relative to Maine and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $167,404 for a family of four. However, Mercer - Starks contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
Mercer - Starks is a somewhat ethnically-diverse town. The people who call Mercer - Starks home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Mercer - Starks residents report their race to be White, followed by Asian. Important ancestries of people in Mercer - Starks include English, French, Irish, German, and French Canadian.
The most common language spoken in Mercer - Starks is English. Other important languages spoken here include French and Polish.
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 Mercer - Starks, the neighborhood, has some outstanding things about the way it looks and its way of life that are worth highlighting.
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 29 people per square mile living here, this neighborhood is less crowded than 93.0% 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, 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 35.5%, which is higher than 96.8% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Diversity
Did you know that the neighborhood has more French Canadian and French ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 7.3% of this neighborhood's residents have French Canadian ancestry and 12.7% have French ancestry.
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 Mercer - Starks are middle-income, making it a moderate income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 50.7% of the neighborhoods in America. With 14.1% of the children here below the federal poverty line, this neighborhood has a higher rate of childhood poverty than 59.3% 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, 38.6% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is manufacturing and laborer occupations, with 33.8% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants (13.6%), and 13.1% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
Languages
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 97.0% of households.
Ethnicity / Ancestry
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Mercer - Starks, ME, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as English (22.0%). There are also a number of people of French ancestry (12.7%), and residents who report Irish roots (10.7%), and some of the residents are also of German ancestry (8.1%), along with some French Canadian ancestry residents (7.3%), 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 (36.3% of working residents), which is at or a bit above the average length of a commute across all U.S. neighborhoods.
Here most residents (75.6%) 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 (10.7%) . 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.
