Brunswick, NC

ZIP code 28424 is assigned to Brunswick, NC, and falls within Columbus 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 85 people live inside it.

At 594 residents per square mile spread over 0.143 square miles, 28424 reads as a small-town area. It is a sparsely populated postal code, 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 are well below the national median. At $48,289, 28424 ranks among the lower-income postal codes, ahead of 14% 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 28424 costs well below the national median. A typical home is valued at $69,000 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $713 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 42.9% owner-occupied, which tends to indicate a mix of housing types rather than one dominant form.

The building stock is dominated by larger apartment buildings of twenty units or more, which account for 70.2% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1986, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 55.3% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews considerably older than the national median, with a median age of 55.4 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.02 people, and 28.6% are family households.

Getting to work takes 13.6 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 100.0% of workers.

Beyond addressing mail, 28424 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, 28424 offers a compact profile of Brunswick: 85 residents, a median household income of $48,289, 0.0% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 0.0%. 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. 28424 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Brunswick 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.