Despite years of high-profile relocations and moves away from cities in the Northeast and West Coast, the country’s wealthiest suburbs can still be found in New York and California.
Scarsdale, New York, about 20 miles north of Manhattan, is the wealthiest suburb in the United States with an average household income of nearly $570,000, according to a new study from personal finance website GOBankingRates. California claims 16 of the 50 wealthiest U.S. suburbs by average household income, while the New York-Newark-Jersey City metropolitan area has 10.
The study that included cities with 5,000 or more households shows "wealthy Americans are swapping notoriously rich city locales in favor of making moves to quiet, secluded suburbs," GOBankingRates said.
While a suburb typically refers to areas surrounding a large city, some suburbs on the list are actually located in the heart of major metropolitan areas. For example, West University Place in greater Houston came in at No. 3 with an average household income of $403,845, and while the municipality is located about six miles from Houston's central business district, it is flanked by Houston's medical district to the east and popular urban commercial areas to its north and south.
Florida's Palm Beach ranked No. 11 on the list but had the highest home value, at a typical cost of about $11.5 million, the study found.