Manhattan dominates list of country’s most expensive zip codes

Real estate analysts—and, let’s be real, plain ol’ real estate gawkers—love speculating on the country’s most expensive places to live, and this time, RentCafe is getting in on the game. The listings website recently released a report looking at the priciest zip codes for renters across the United States, and if you guessed that New York City is at the top of the list, then you’ve clearly been paying attention to the real estate market for the past, oh, decade or so.

According to RentCafe’s data, the majority of the country’s 20 priciest zip codes—for renters, anyway—are in New York, with Manhattan taking 16 of those slots. The other four were located, unsurprisingly, in San Francisco and Boston, which are routinely among the most expensive cities in the United States.

As for where, exactly, those zip codes are, the answers may surprise you: Battery Park City (10282) takes the top slot, with an average rent of $5,924/month; it’s followed by Lenox Hill (10065), the Upper West Side (10023, 10025, and 10024), and—this one is a bit of a head-scratcher—the area encompassing parts of the Lower East Side and Chinatown, along with Two Bridges (10002).

RentCafe used the Yardi Matrix as their guide for this exercise in real estate analysis, looking at, in their words, “rent averages for every state and every zip code in 125 major markets across the U.S.” (They also looked at rents for the month of March to come up with their list.)

Their analysis also looked at the least expensive places to rent in the country, a list that’s dominated by cities in the Midwest and the South, with Wichita, Kansas taking the top two spots. So if you’re looking to spend less than $500/month on rent, perhaps the Midwest is for you?

• The Most Expensive Zip Codes for Renters in 2017 – Mapped [RentCafe]