Durham, NH

ZIP code 03824 is assigned to Durham, NH, and falls within Strafford 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 15,054 people live inside it.

At 672 residents per square mile spread over 22.417 square miles, 03824 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 here sit well above the national picture. The median household income of $126,658 places 03824 in the upper reaches of American postal codes, ahead of 93% 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 03824 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $469,900 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,432 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 65.2% 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 58.9% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1979, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 25.3% is high, which in many places reflects seasonal or second-home use rather than abandonment.

The population skews notably young, with a median age of 20.7 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 5.19 people on average, with 59.0% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 20.7 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 49.9% of workers, while 23.7% walk, 18.3% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 03824 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, 03824 offers a compact profile of Durham: 15,054 residents, a median household income of $126,658, 77.8% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 4.3%. 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. 03824 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Durham 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.