Wilmington, NC

ZIP code 28401 is assigned to Wilmington, NC, and falls within New Hanover County. Like every US postal code, it began as a mail-routing device rather than a geographic boundary — the US Postal Service groups delivery routes under a single code so carriers and sorting equipment can process mail efficiently. Today it also serves as a practical shorthand for the area itself: roughly 21,820 people live inside it.

At 704 residents per square mile spread over 30.987 square miles, 28401 reads as a small-town area. It is a mid-sized postal code by population, and density shapes almost everything else on this page — how people get to work, whether they own or rent, and what housing costs.

Household earnings run below the national median. At $52,159, 28401 sits in the lower half, ahead of 19% of them. The US median for comparison is $70,109. Bear in mind that median income describes the midpoint household, not the average — it is not pulled upward by a handful of very high earners the way a mean would be.

Housing in 28401 costs close to the national median. A typical home is valued at $263,000 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,183 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 40.5% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 57.7% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1954, making the housing here mid-century.

The population skews broadly in line with the national age profile, with a median age of 41.6 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.02 people, and 41.1% are family households.

Getting to work takes 19.2 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 64.5% of workers, while 19.6% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 28401 does a lot of quiet administrative work. Retailers use it to calculate shipping and sales tax at checkout. Insurers use it to set premiums, since risk profiles vary geographically. Employers and marketers use it to define service areas. Government agencies use it to route benefits and organise reporting. If you have ever been asked for a postal code by a form that clearly does not intend to send you anything, this is why.

For anyone weighing a move, 28401 offers a compact profile of Wilmington: 21,820 residents, a median household income of $52,159, 33.7% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 5.8%. A handful of figures like these answer more relocation questions than most neighbourhood guides do.

One caution worth repeating: a postal code is not a neighbourhood. 28401 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Wilmington may be split across more than one code. Boundaries also shift as USPS adjusts delivery routes. Treat the figures here as describing a delivery area, which is what they actually measure.