Castine, ME

ZIP code 04421 is assigned to Castine, ME, and falls within Hancock 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 1,222 people live inside it.

At 157 residents per square mile spread over 7.776 square miles, 04421 reads as a rural 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 $111,500, 04421 sits comfortably in the upper half, ahead of 89% 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 04421 costs well above the national median. A typical home is valued at $557,700 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,028 a month. Ownership dominates: 81.5% of occupied homes are owner-occupied, which usually signals an established residential area with relatively low turnover.

The building stock is dominated by detached single-family houses, which account for 91.6% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1973, making the housing here from the later twentieth century. The vacancy rate of 56.5% 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 21 against 42 nationally. Households are relatively large at 4.05 people on average, with 70.9% classified as family households.

Getting to work takes 15.1 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is walked at 43.6% of workers, while 43.6% walk, 12.7% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 04421 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, 04421 offers a compact profile of Castine: 1,222 residents, a median household income of $111,500, 75.6% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 2.1%. 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. 04421 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Castine 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.