These Are The Best ZIP Codes In America

Where Does My ZIP Code Rank?

You may not think of your ZIP code as a point of pride, but those five little numbers can actually say a whole lot where you live—specifically how great it is (or not). But which ZIP  codes are simply the best?

You can check your ZIP code or current location address with the help of the ZIP code lookup at AZIPCode.com. And get your ZIP code compared below listed ZIP code with your one. That was a question the Movoto Real Estate Blog was willing and ready to tackle. And what’s more, we ranked these five-digit locales completely by the numbers, so to speak.

These are the absolute best ZIP codes in the nation:

1. 20004, Washington, DC
2. 77005, Houston, TX
3. 98039, Medina, WA
4. 95497, Sea Ranch, CA
5. 11930, Amagansett, NY
6. 92121, San Diego, CA
7. 60603, Chicago, IL
8. 60602, Chicago, IL
9. 67230, Wichita, KS
10. 64113, Kansas City, MO

You might be a little surprised by some of these, and you might be wondering where your ZIP ranked or how we got our results. And all you have to do to find out our methods is read on to the very next section.

Our Methodology

We’ve made many lists and maps before, and in all of them, we used math and numbers rather than personal preference to get our results. This Big Deal List was no different. Using the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey, we researched each ZIP code in the U.S., including those that were only a few people in size. The criteria we looked at were:

• Median Household Income (the higher the better)
• Unemployment Rate (the lower the better)
• Average Commute Time (the lower the better)
• Median Rent (the higher, the more desirable an area)
• Median House Worth (the higher, the more desirable an area)
• High School Graduation Rate (the higher, the better)
• Families Below The Poverty Line (the lower, the better)

We omitted any ZIP codes that didn’t report data in any one of these criteria, which left us with a total of 28,061 ZIP codes.

Then, we ranked each ZIP code in each category from one to 28,061, with scores closer to one being better.

Finally, we averaged each areas rankings into one Big Deal Score, and the place with the smallest number for that score was our best ZIP code.

Let’s take a closer look at our top 10 areas, and find out what exactly makes them so special.