The richest ZIP codes in America, and why the Census stops counting at $250,000

The Census Bureau will not tell you the median household income of the richest ZIP codes in America. It stops counting at $250,000.

That ceiling, called a top code, exists to protect the privacy of the small number of households with very high incomes. Any place whose median lands above it is published at the cap. In the 2020 to 2024 American Community Survey, 62 ZIP codes hit it, out of 21,020 with at least 500 households.

Those 62 are the richest ZIP codes in the country. Ranking them by income is impossible, since they all read $250,000+. Ranking them by home value gets closer, and there the data runs into a second ceiling: median home value tops out at $2,000,000, and 13 of the 62 hit that cap too.

The 13 ZIP codes at the home-value cap are tied and listed in ZIP code order.

The list clusters around a handful of metro areas. Westchester County, New York, north of New York City, has 12 of the 62, more than any other county. The San Francisco Bay Area also has 12, led by Santa Clara County with five and Contra Costa County with three. The Washington and Baltimore area has nine, the Boston suburbs six, and the Chicago and Philadelphia suburbs three each. By state, New York has 17, California 12, and New Jersey eight.

The richest ZIP code we can actually rank

Below the cap, the highest published median household income belongs to ZIP 20817 in Montgomery County, Maryland, at $249,332. It sits $669 under the ceiling. Next is 60521 in DuPage County, Illinois, at $249,200, then 07028 in Essex County, New Jersey, at $247,361.

Those three are useful because they show where the cap bites. A ZIP code at $249,332 and one at $400,000 would both look nearly identical in Census tables, and there is no way to separate them from published data.

At the other end

The lowest median household incomes among ZIP codes with at least 500 households are 44503 in Mahoning County, Ohio, at $12,274, and 44702 in Stark County, Ohio, at $12,411. Both cover downtown areas, Youngstown and Canton. Third is 32603 in Alachua County, Florida, at $13,408, a ZIP code in Gainesville, the home of the University of Florida.

Student-heavy and downtown ZIP codes turn up repeatedly at the bottom of income rankings, which is why comparing two ZIP codes without knowing who lives in them can mislead. The population count and household count matter as much as the dollar figure.

State-level lists are in our studies of the richest and poorest ZIP codes in California, New York, and Texas. The full national ranking is at ZIP codes with the highest median household income, and any ZIP code can be looked up directly. Also see the largest ZIP codes in America.

Sources

Figures are from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2020-2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, tables B19013 (median household income) and B25077 (median home value), tabulated for ZIP Code Tabulation Areas. ZCTAs are built from census blocks and approximate USPS ZIP codes rather than matching them exactly. Places with fewer than 500 households are excluded here because small-sample medians carry wide margins of error. The $250,000+ income and $2,000,000+ home-value figures are top codes, not measurements; the true medians in those places are higher by an unknown amount.