15 Central Park West: the richest building in zip code 10023, the Upper West Side, and probably all of NYC.
A new ranking of the wealthiest 1,000 zip codes in America revealed what a lot of Upper West Siders already know: that the neighborhood has one of the highest concentrations of wealth in the country.
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Dubbed the ‘Wealthy 1,000,’ the inaugural list by The Business Journals gives more weight to population density than similar rankings. It includes two UWS zip codes (10023 and 10024) in the top three wealthiest across the U.S. and a third (10025) in the top five. Those three zip codes cover almost the entirety of the UWS from West 59th to 110th streets.
New York City isn’t just well represented on this list; it dominates, with nine zip codes (eight in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn) in the top ten and seventeen in the wealthiest 1,000.
The top zip code in the country–and the only one outranking 10023 and 10024–is 10011 in Chelsea.
Here are the top ten:
- 10011 – Chelsea, Manhattan
- 10023 – Upper West Side, Manhattan
- 10024 – Upper West Side, Manhattan
- 10013 – Tribeca/Soho/Chinatown, Manhattan
- 10025 – Upper West Side, Manhattan
- 10019 – Midtown/Midtown West, Manhattan
- 10016 – Murray Hill, Manhattan
- 10003 – Greenwich Village, Manhattan
- 11217 – Park Slope, Brooklyn
- 94114 – San Francisco, California
The methodology used here–which combines data like income, home equity, estimated savings, poverty rates and population density–presents a list highly skewed towards more populated areas. The top 25 zip codes are concentrated around New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and Boston, and the focus on population density results in a list that largely favors the Northeast (45.6% of the Wealthy 1,000 are in this part of the country).
ALSO READ: NYC Has Staggering Number of Millionaires: Report
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“In 2022, [the] Upper West Side was the city’s 3rd largest neighborhood by population out of 59 neighborhoods,” according to the NYU Furman Center, which states there were an estimated 226,989 people. Based on data from the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau, the neighborhood has a population density of 104,483 people per square mile.
The list also avoided factoring in secondary homes and ranches, so areas like the Hamptons, which typically dominate wealth-related rankings, are not as high up on the list as some might expect. States like Montana, Vermont, Wyoming and others that have experienced an influx of million-dollar earners did not have any zip codes on the ‘Wealthy 1,000.’
ALSO READ: UWS Zip Code Among Top 100 Most Expensive in Country (Nov. 2023)
Areas with high population densities alongside lower income levels and high poverty rates were excluded.
Of the top ten on the ‘Wealthy 1,000,’ 10025 had both the lowest average income per capita ($83,211) and the lowest average home value ($1,007,554). The 10013 zip code (Tribeca/Soho/Chinatown) led the way in both figures at a $157,378 income and $3,305,546 home value.
I always assumed the Upper East Side was taking home wealthiest zip code awards, this is surprising to me.
30 years ago, perhaps….
I’d like to see the median for all these data points. There are tremendous disparities on the UWS between place like Wise Houses and the brownstones that line the side streets.
Super strange methodology here – they are just looking purely at *concentration* of wealth in a zip, i.e. completely disregarding per capita wealth? Because esp. in 10025, so many residents are (like me) in subsidized housing such as NYCHA or HDFCs or the buildings that are essentially nicer SROs for seniors. Per capita, there’s no chance 10025 is even in the country’s top 100 zips.
What a weird (possibly deceiving) methodology.