Saugatuck is a tiny city located in the state of Michigan. With a population of 437 people and just one neighborhood, Saugatuck is the 504th largest community in Michigan.
Saugatuck home prices are not only among the most expensive in Michigan, but Saugatuck real estate also consistently ranks among the most expensive in America.
Unlike some cities, Saugatuck isn’t mainly white- or blue-collar. Instead, the most prevalent occupations for people in Saugatuck are a mix of both white- and blue-collar jobs. Overall, Saugatuck is a city of managers, professionals, and sales and office workers. There are especially a lot of people living in Saugatuck who work in management occupations (23.30%), sales jobs (11.50%), and business and financial occupations (11.50%).
Telecommuters are a relatively large percentage of the workforce: 21.53% of people work from home. While this number may seem small overall, as a fraction of the total workforce it is high relative to the nation. These workers are often telecommuters who work in knowledge-based, white-collar professions. For example, Silicon Valley has large numbers of people who telecommute. Other at-home workers may be self-employed people who operate small businesses out of their homes.
Another notable thing is that Saugatuck is a major vacation destination. Much of the city’s population is seasonal: many people own second homes and only live there part-time, during the vacation season. The effect on the local economy is that many of the businesses are dependent on tourist dollars, and may operate only during the high season. As the vacation season ends, Saugatuck’s population drops significantly, such that year-round residents will notice that the city is a much quieter place to live.
In addition, Saugatuck is home to many people who could be described as "urban sophisticates", which are people who are not only wealthy and employed in professional occupations, but highly educated to boot. Urban sophisticates have urbane tastes - whether they reside in a big or small city, a suburb, or a little town. Urban sophisticates support bookstores, quality clothing stores, enjoy luxury travel, and in big cities, they are truly the patrons of the arts, attending and supporting institutions such as opera, symphony, ballet, and theatre.
It is a fairly quiet city because there are relatively few of those groups of people who have a tendency to be noisy. (Children, for example, often can't help themselves from being noisy, and being parents ourselves, we know!) Saugatuck has relatively few families with children living at home, and is quieter because of it. Renters and college students, for their own reasons, can also be noisy. Saugatuck has few renters and college students. But the biggest reason it is quieter in Saugatuck than in most places in America, is that there are just simply fewer people living here. If you think trees make good neighbors, Saugatuck may be for you.
In Saugatuck, however, the average commute to work is quite long. On average, people spend 33.77 minutes each day getting to work, which is significantly higher than the national average.
Do you like to read, write and learn? If you move to Saugatuck, you'll likely find that many of your neighbors like to as well. Saugatuck is one of the more educated communities in America, with a full 73.25% of its adults having a college degree or even advanced degree, compared to a national average across all communities of 21.84%.
The per capita income in Saugatuck in 2018 was $78,256, which is wealthy relative to Michigan and the nation. This equates to an annual income of $313,024 for a family of four. However, Saugatuck contains both very wealthy and poor people as well.
The people who call Saugatuck home describe themselves as belonging to a variety of racial and ethnic groups. The greatest number of Saugatuck residents report their race to be White, followed by Native American. Important ancestries of people in Saugatuck include Irish, German, European, English, and British.
The most common language spoken in Saugatuck is English. Other important languages spoken here include Spanish and German/Yiddish.
The way a neighborhood looks and feels when you walk or drive around it, from its setting, its buildings, and its flavor, can make all the difference. This neighborhood has some really cool things about the way it looks and feels as revealed by NeighborhoodScout's exclusive research. This might include anything from the housing stock to the types of households living here to how people get around.
A majority of the adults in the neighborhood are wealthy and educated executives. They own stately homes that tend to maintain high real estate appreciation rates. Their upper-level careers keep them busy, but allow them to live comfortably. If you're an executive and want to keep similar company, consider settling in this neighborhood, rated as an executive lifestyle "best choice" neighborhood for Michigan by NeighborhoodScout's analysis, which rated it as better for executive lifestyles than 99.3% of the neighborhoods in Michigan. In addition to being an excellent choice for highly educated executives, this neighborhood is also a very good choice for active retirees and urban sophisticates.
In addition, with more than 1.8% of residents living with a same sex partner, is truly a neighborhood that stands out from the rest in this regard. In fact, exclusive analysis by NeighborhoodScout reveals that this neighborhood has a greater concentration of same sex couples than 96.0% of U.S. neighborhoods.
Despite all of the residential real estate here in the neighborhood, NeighborhoodScout has discovered that much of it is vacant. In resort or second-home vacation areas, this naturally occurs because homes and apartments are seasonally occupied, and empty for a portion of the year. In non-vacation or resort areas, however, this can be an indicator of property abandonment or a weak real estate market. The vacancy rate here is 48.2%, which is higher than 98.5% of all U.S. neighborhoods.
Whether walking, biking, riding, or driving, the length of one's commute is an important factor for one's quality of life. The neighborhood stands out for its commute length, according to NeighborhoodScout's analysis. Long commutes can be brutal. They take time, money, and energy, leaving less of you for yourself and your family. The residents of the neighborhood unfortunately have the distinction of having, on average, a longer commute than most any neighborhood in America. 10.0% of commuters here travel more than one hour just one-way to work. That is more than two hours per day. This percentage with two-hour + round-trip commutes is higher than NeighborhoodScout found in 95.5% of all neighborhoods in America.
Did you know that the neighborhood has more Dutch and British ancestry people living in it than nearly any neighborhood in America? It's true! In fact, 11.3% of this neighborhood's residents have Dutch ancestry and 3.3% have British ancestry.
How wealthy a neighborhood is, from very wealthy, to middle income, to low income is very formative with regard to the personality and character of a neighborhood. Equally important is the rate of people, particularly children, who live below the federal poverty line. In some wealthy gated communities, the areas immediately surrounding can have high rates of childhood poverty, which indicates other social issues. NeighborhoodScout's analysis reveals both aspects of income and poverty for this neighborhood.
The neighbors in the neighborhood in Saugatuck are upper-middle income, making it an above average income neighborhood. NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis reveals that this neighborhood has a higher income than 83.1% of the neighborhoods in America. In addition, 4.0% of the children seventeen and under living in this neighborhood are living below the federal poverty line, which is a lower rate of childhood poverty than is found in 67.9% of America's neighborhoods.
What we choose to do for a living reflects who we are. Each neighborhood has a different mix of occupations represented, and together these tell you about the neighborhood and help you understand if this neighborhood may fit your lifestyle.
In the neighborhood, 60.2% of the working population is employed in executive, management, and professional occupations. The second most important occupational group in this neighborhood is sales and service jobs, from major sales accounts, to working in fast food restaurants, with 21.5% of the residents employed. Other residents here are employed in manufacturing and laborer occupations (13.3%), and 4.9% in clerical, assistant, and tech support occupations.
The most common language spoken in the neighborhood is English, spoken by 98.2% of households.
Culture is shared learned behavior. We learn it from our parents, their parents, our houses of worship, and much of our culture – our learned behavior – comes from our ancestors. That is why ancestry and ethnicity can be so interesting and important to understand: places with concentrations of people of one or more ancestries often express those shared learned behaviors and this gives each neighborhood its own culture. Even different neighborhoods in the same city can have drastically different cultures.
In the neighborhood in Saugatuck, MI, residents most commonly identify their ethnicity or ancestry as German (20.1%). There are also a number of people of Irish ancestry (14.3%), and residents who report English roots (12.7%), and some of the residents are also of Dutch ancestry (11.3%), along with some Italian ancestry residents (5.8%), among others.
Even if your neighborhood is walkable, you may still have to drive to your place of work. Some neighborhoods are located where many can get to work in just a few minutes, while others are located such that most residents have a long and arduous commute. The greatest number of commuters in neighborhood spend between 15 and 30 minutes commuting one-way to work (38.7% of working residents), which is shorter than the time spent commuting to work for most Americans. However, there is also a significant group of residents (10.0%) who commute over an hour in each direction.
Here most residents (76.6%) drive alone in a private automobile to get to work. In a neighborhood like this, as in most of the nation, many residents find owning a car useful for getting to work.