Lexington, KY

ZIP code 40517 is assigned to Lexington, KY, and falls within Fayette 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 36,396 people live inside it.

At 5,897 residents per square mile spread over 6.172 square miles, 40517 reads as a densely built-up 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 $51,778, 40517 sits in the lower half, ahead of 19% 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 40517 costs close to the national median. A typical home is valued at $196,300 against a US median of $207,500, and median gross rent runs $1,092 a month. The split between owning and renting is fairly even at 36.8% 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 49.6% of housing units here. The median construction year is 1980, making the housing here from the later twentieth century.

The population skews younger than the country as a whole, with a median age of 31 against 42 nationally. The average household holds 2.12 people, and 49.9% are family households.

Getting to work takes 23.4 minutes on average one way. The dominant mode is drove alone at 79.0% of workers, while 10.1% work from home. Commute patterns are one of the better proxies for how a place actually functions day to day.

Beyond addressing mail, 40517 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, 40517 offers a compact profile of Lexington: 36,396 residents, a median household income of $51,778, 41.3% of adults holding a bachelor's degree or higher, and an unemployment rate of 6.3%. 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. 40517 may cover parts of several distinct areas, and a single neighbourhood in Lexington 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.