Waterville, ME

ZIP code 04901 is assigned to Waterville, ME, and falls within Kennebec 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 27,431 people live inside it.

At 348 residents per square mile spread over 78.772 square miles, 04901 reads as a small-town area. It is a populous 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 below the national median. At $54,122, 04901 sits in the lower half, ahead of 22% 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 04901 costs close to the national median. A typical home is valued at $188,800 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $957 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 58.0% 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 54.2% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1966, making the housing here mid-century.

The population skews broadly in line with the national age profile, with a median age of 38 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.44 people, and 56.0% are family households.

Getting to work takes 19.9 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 72.2% of workers, while 12.5% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 04901 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, 04901 offers a compact profile of Waterville: 27,431 residents, a median household income of $54,122, 30.2% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 4.1%. 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. 04901 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Waterville 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.