Bloomberg's 50 Richest Places In America 2020

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I grew up in #29. A long, long time ago. And even though I'm more financially successful than my parents ever were, I couldn't afford to live there now.

They are clustered in the Bay Area, NYC, DC and Chicago

I'm guessing that the lack of anything in Southern California is because the wealthiest zip codes are within the city of LA itself, ditto Manhattan and Brooklyn

Piedmont was always nice, but that nice? Must be the Techbros buying up all the land. A lot of Near North suburbs of Chicago too- old beef money?

Blue states got all the money! Holla!

I haven't heard of half of them, let alone grown up in one of them.

The biggest surprise was 3 cities in Ohio! Who knew there were rich people in Ohio. It’s insane how rich CA is.

Grew up next door to Darien.

Scarsdale, home of Maude. What did Walter do to make all that money?

Maude lived in Tuckahoe which was decidedly more downscale R8

As for Walter "Her current husband, Walter Findlay (played by Bill Macy), owns an appliance store called Findlay's Friendly Appliances."

They need to have 2000 plus households. I grew up in one where the average is $700K but has less households so isn’t listed. Bill gates and Bezos have homes there...it was fun and didn’t used to be so monied...memories of Medina, WA

Manhattan areas not listed, but went to camp with many kids from #s 6, 9, 15 and 23

[quote]I'm guessing that the lack of anything in Southern California is because the wealthiest zip codes are within the city of LA itself, ditto Manhattan and Brooklyn

Really?

I grew up close to Scarsdale I never heard of #1

It's coincidental how Piedmont and Orinda California are ranked right next to each other on that list because theyre only a few miles apart.

#13 — Bronxville NY. (it's like a storybook village. very nice.)

No, all those apartment dwellers bring our numbers down.

I know 2 people who are desperately trying to sell their places in Bronxville and move to Florida because of the Trump “screw the blue states” tax. The insane real estate taxes are a huge disincentive now because they can’t be deducted. So home values crashed. Not cheap by any means, but they probably lost 20% of their home value from their peak before the Trump tax “cuts” (aka, tax increase) .

Do all residents of places on the Bloomberg list have to be billionaires?

Actually the income averages are lower than I would expect. Some in the $200,000s.

Those in Northern Virginia with serious assets, especially subtle 'old money' family wealth, are much more likely to live in Middleburg or Upperville...but those two enclaves contain vast estates, whereas Great Falls is concentrated 'McMansion' wealth.

That's a fair point R12, but those areas may have apartments that bring the average income down. I know Beverly Hills has many apartments on the "flats" for instance

It is surprising though (and quite telling) how many of those towns are in the VA and MD suburbs of DC, R20

Agree R22. Though there was some old money around DC pre-90s, there seems to have been a complete merger of our political and business leadership into one hypercapitalist cabal centered on DC. Bezos is the perfect representative of this.

I thought Bezos lives in LA?

[quote]I'm guessing that the lack of anything in Southern California is because the wealthiest zip codes are within the city of LA itself

Did you miss Malibu at #37? And Montecito is also in SoCal, although not in the LA area. I'm surprised Rancho Santa Fe is not on there. Or La Jolla--although that's part of San Diego.

I saw those R25, I meant overall--the list is dominated by suburbs of San Francisco, NYC and DC, with Chicago not far behind.

Given the amount of wealth in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties, I was surprised that there were so unrepresented.

By comparison, tiny Essex County, New Jersey has three mentions (Short Hills, Glen Ridge, Upper Montclair)

Texas has four suburbs on list: Two in Houston, one each in Dallas and Austin.

Something's amiss. Houston's Memorial suburbs are not on the list, even though they are more upscale than Bellaire.

Not lived in per se, but woken up in #28, #24, #44, and #37.

r14, but Orinda is over the hill, safe and sound. Piedmont is Oakland adjacent (and man how the Temescal district has changed).

per Wikipedia:

As of 2015, Fisher Island had the highest per capita income of any place in the United States. The census-designated place had only 218 households and a total population of 467,

As per the fine print above R30, they have only included places with more than 2,000 "households"

The reason the big name rich towns didn’t make it is they are too big - which means a few poors can sneak into the town and live above the local market. This is an odd listing because they chose really small towns.

I've ridden a public bus through one of them.

I've ridden a public bus through one of them.

I dated a JAP from Scarsdale.

West University Place and Bellaire, Texas, were once suburbs, they're now in the central part of the metropolitan area. West U. is within the loop; Bellaire is partially within the loop.

I lived in Bellaire during the late 70s in the least posh area, near the sewage treatment plant and the railroad tracks. And it did stink in the summer. I was living in a rental with friends. It was safer and quieter than a similar-income area in Houston proper would have been. My brother now lives in Bellaire, outside the loop. His area was once full of bungalows. Now it's mostly filled with new builds that are [italic]not quite[/italic] too big for the lot. They're not McMansions. Bellaire has zoning laws and building regulations that prevent crappy building. It's a good place to live and raise children . The public high school there is within Houston I.S.D.; however, it's long been the best public high school in the area. Buying a house within the catchment area for that school adds tens of thousands of dollars to the purchase price.

I didn’t grow up there, but I grew up near Great Falls, Virginia. I always wanted my parents to drive through there to see the houses.

I honestly find them revolting now. The houses got bigger and bigger, eventually with weirdly ostentatious palaces built presumably by foreign oil money.

Great Falls is near the Tysons Galleria mall, which is anchored by Saks and Neiman’s and full of elite boutique shops that are usually empty—Gucci, Versace, etc.—that you’d associate with Rodeo Drive or Fifth Ave. It also has a Ritz Carlton and, as it turns out, a lot of wives from the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman etc. live in the Ritz Carlton when they visit and practically live in the malls. A lot of their families live in Great Falls. Also AOL founder Steve Case, the M&M Mars family, and lovelies including Rick Santorum and Oliver North.

The new movie with DL fave Hugh Jackman (Bad Education) is set in #38

R35 I married a JAP from Scarsdale!

Me Too!

Had no idea Ono's family lived in the US R39, let alone Scarsdale

Which is very funny given Linda Eastman, as per R40

R26 isn’t NJ the richest state in the country?

So not surprising .

Good point R42

And a good portion of NJ is very upper middle class, Norman Rockwell looking suburbia (those three towns for example) nothing like the tract housing/Real Housewives McMansions/Sopranos-Jersey Shore wasteland DLers picture it as.

Unfortunately the NJ towns that tend to make the richest lists are the Sopranos type towns like Upper Saddle River. The nice old neighborhoods like Upper Montclair or Llewelyn Park are not enclosed enough to be homogenously wealthy.

R44 upper Montclair is listed. That’s not considered the nicest/richest area anyway, but further out , Far Hills/Mendham etc. And Princeton.

I'm familiar with Indian Hill, Ohio. Notice the odd name?: "The City of the Village of Indian Hill". In Ohio, villages and cities are legal terms. Indian Hill became populous enough that it went from being a village to a city (in legal terms). But they wanted to maintain that quaint image of a village. Anyway, Indian Hill is where Marge Schott, Neil Armstrong and Peter Frampton used to live. You barely know you're there, when you're there. Lots of winding roads, surrounded by bushes and trees, with the occasional hidden driveway that leads to a large house with a pool and extensive lawns.

LOL @ R44

Upper Montclair, Glen Ridge and Short Hills are all pretty much as described--non-Sopranos, old houses, upper middle class executives, etc..--what DLers think of when they think of "Connecticut suburbs"

There are a number of NJ towns I was surprised not to see on there R45 -- Alpine, which is home to lots of black entertainers and sports stars (but may not have enough people to qualify) as well as Princeton and Mendham, though those latter two may have enough apartments to bring the average down. (Not poor people, but a single person making $225K/year is still going to drop the average)

R9 in the opening of "Maude" the car is on the West Side Highway, then over the George Washington Bridge, Those Hollywood folk don't know where Tuckahoe is.

R4, when describing physical distance "farther" is correct. Easy to remember, begins with far.

R49 here. Comment above was for R45, not 4.

I noticed that Beverly Hills isn't listed. Did the Clampetts move back to the Ozarks?

Beverly Hills, as noted earlier R51, has a lot of apartment buildings and so the average income is probably not as high as you'd think.

Yeah, but San Marino doesn't. I'm surprised that it didn't make the list.

Yep r42.

New Jersey is where a lot of well off families who work in Manhattan go to raise their kids. Not surprising.

Always funny how Conneticut has the good PR, while Jersey is the butt of jokes.

R48 of you’re going to the non - Coastal towns in Westchester you would often take the Westside highway (which always has less traffic than the FDR) to the GW. They got it spot on!!

And then double back on the Tappan Zee to get across the river to Westchester R55? Would that be shorter than taking the Saw Mill or Deegan through the Bronx?