Oak Bluffs, MA

ZIP code 02557 is assigned to Oak Bluffs, MA, and falls within Dukes 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 1,849 people live inside it.

At 571 residents per square mile spread over 3.24 square miles, 02557 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 run above the national median. At $95,287, 02557 sits comfortably in the upper half, ahead of 80% 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 02557 costs far above the national median. A typical home is valued at $1,006,000 against a US median of $207,500. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 67.2% 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 83.3% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1951, making the housing here mid-century. The vacancy rate of 66.9% 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 53.4 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.0 people, and 51.7% are family households.

Getting to work takes 9.5 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 58.7% of workers, while 8.6% walk, 13.1% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 02557 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, 02557 offers a compact profile of Oak Bluffs: 1,849 residents, a median household income of $95,287, 41.9% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 22.3%. 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. 02557 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Oak Bluffs 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.