Date: 2025-08-22 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00025856
REAL ESTATE
IS EXPENSIVE PRICE OR VALUE?
America’s Most Expensive ZIP Codes
IS EXPENSIVE PRICE OR VALUE?
America’s Most Expensive ZIP Codes
Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/09/realestate/most-expensive-zip-codes.html
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I have always thought that 'real estate' is a confusing sector to analyze and draw logical conclusions. My maternal grandfather had a building company and built thousands of houses in an area located between Preston and Southport in Lancashire, England in the years after WWI. As a young man he had thought about emmigrating to Canada but returned to England, but only after he had observed the efficiency of building in Canada relative to what was normal in the UK. My grandfather retired about twenty years before I was born!
I do not have any formal training in real estate but my general observations of the sector have me somewhat confused. While some of the price and value relationships make logical sense, others do not and remind one of the multiple trends that are all going on at the same time.
My personal experience with real estate has been relatively small, but it still added to confusion rather than delivering clarification.
My parents were renting a house when I was quite young ... about 6 years old. It was a big house with a big garden in Okehampton, Devon in the UK. The landlord died and my parents bought the property from his estate as 'sitting tennants' for £700. That was in 1947 (I think). That same house was recently (2015 I think) on the market for £565,000. In pure money terms the price in 800 times as much! I don't know how much my parents sold the house for when they moved from Okehampton back to Lancashire around 1970.
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In the mid 1960s I was living and working in Texas near Houston. My wife and I almost bought a house not far from Galveston for $13,000 ... a nice suburban ranch style house in very good condition and well under what we understood to be the going price was in the area. A second visit to the house and we understood why the price was so low ... the house was downwind of a pulp and paper mill and the smell ... stench ... from that facility was unbearable. We almost made a catastrophic home investment. We rented from then on when we were living in Texas!
In 1976 my wife and I bought a nice suburban house in Upper Montclair, New Jersey for $57,000. She sold the house some years later and moved to California. That house recently (2018) changed hands for more than $900,000.
Peter Burgess
California areas dominated the top 100 this year (and last).
By Michael Kolomatsky
Nov. 9, 2023
If California’s home prices had physical weight, they’d tip the state into the Pacific Ocean. Among the 100 most expensive ZIP codes in the United States in 2023, 61 were found in the Golden State, according to a study by RealtyHop. New York was next, with 18 ZIP codes in the top 100. To compile the rankings, researchers analyzed more than 3.6 million active home listings from Jan. 1 to Oct. 15, using the median list price in each ZIP to identify the most expensive ones.
California actually gained two spots in the top 100, after notching 59 of them on the 2022 list. Atherton, Calif., (94027), a town near Palo Alto where residents recently opposed new housing developments, was the most expensive for the fourth year running, with a median list price of $7.95 million. On the municipal level, seven Los Angeles ZIP codes made the top 100, more than any other city. Newport Beach, Calif., just to the south, was next, with six ZIP codes on the list.
New York ZIP codes were led by Sagaponack, N.Y. (11962), in the Hamptons, at a median of $5.9 million. In New York City, the 10013 ZIP (mostly TriBeCa), was priciest, at a median of about $3.6 million.
That beachfront communities on both coasts are expensive is no surprise, but what may be is just how expensive the homes in all 100 ZIP codes are. Median list prices ranged from the $7.95 million in Atherton to just shy of $2 million in the 100th most expensive ZIP, 90027, the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. Those and everything in between are unaffordable to a vast majority of the populace.
Over the course of the year, however, median prices at the top went down. While 61 ZIP codes had a median of more than $2.5 million in 2022, this year only 53 did. The overall median of the top 100 was also lower this year, dropping $152,000 from last year, to $2,597,500.
This week’s chart shows the country’s 25 most expensive ZIP codes and the median list price in each, according to RealtyHop.
The 25 Most Expensive ZIP Codes
California dominated a new study of the country's priciest areas.
Source: RealtyHopBy The New York Times
A correction was made on Nov. 9, 2023: An earlier version of this article misstated the median list price in Sagaponack, N.Y. It is $5.9 million, not $6.29 million. When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more