The Richest Towns in New York

We’ve represented buyers since 2017 and handed back over $11 million in commission. Long enough to notice the towns clients ask about and the towns holding the money aren’t the same place.

The richest town in New York depends on the list

One list is where the money lives. The other is where it holidays.

• Most expensive homes: Ranked by median sale price, PropertyShark’s 2025 winner is Sagaponack, ZIP 11962, at $5,925,000 and third-priciest in the country.
• Richest households: Ranked by average household income, the Census 2024 winner is Tuxedo Park, Orange County, at $664,014 a year.

Sagaponack sells the priciest houses in New York State, and it doesn’t appear anywhere in the top twenty by household income. Many of those houses belong to people who file their taxes elsewhere and arrive in June.

That one fact explains most of what follows.

The richest towns on Long Island, by what people earn

Here’s the top twenty by average household income, from Census 2024 data. Read the county column, not the names.

Fourteen of twenty sit on Long Island, and twelve of those are in Nassau County, on the North Shore. Nassau owns this list quietly, without a single beach photograph.

Look at the populations too. Cove Neck has 231 residents and Hewlett Neck 519, so these are villages the size of a large apartment building. That’s how they stay at the top.

The county count is twelve in Nassau, four in Westchester, two in Suffolk and one in Orange. The list has twenty entries because Scarsdale is doing two jobs at once: a real town and a statistical outlier.

Scarsdale is the one to notice, because it’s third with 18,010 people in it while every other name near the top is tiny. It’s a working Westchester town with schools, a train station and a real commute, and it still out-earns almost everything on Long Island. That’s why it costs what it costs.

Why the Census gives up at $250,001

Look at the median income column on any published version of this list and you will see the same number over and over: $250,001.

The repeated number is a privacy cap, not a tie. The Census caps its published median household income at $250,000. Above that it reports the cap rather than the truth, to protect a small number of very identifiable households. Analysts call it a jam value.

So the Census looks at Brookville, looks at the number, decides it has seen quite enough, and writes down $250,001 for the fifteenth time.

That’s why any honest ranking of the richest towns in New York sorts by average income rather than median, and it’s why you should treat the exact order near the top as approximate. The gaps between neighbours are smaller than the measurement is.

The most expensive towns on Long Island are a different animal

The Hamptons dominate the price list and are largely absent from the income list, and the reason isn’t mysterious.

PropertyShark’s 2025 ranking of the priciest ZIP codes in the country put Sagaponack third nationally. Water Mill also cleared $5 million. These are second-home markets: the house is here, and the income that paid for it is filed in Manhattan, or Connecticut, or Florida.

How lopsided it gets is measurable. The East Hampton Press worked through the 2010 Census for the South Fork and found Southampton Village had gone from 43% of homes vacant or seasonal in 2000 to over 61% a decade later. Town-wide, the full-time share slipped from 60% to barely half.

That’s fifteen-year-old counting, and the direction hasn’t reversed since.

For a buyer the distinction matters more than it sounds. A market made of second homes is seasonal and thin, and it reacts to a bad year on Wall Street in a way a commuter town never does.

The North Shore villages on the income list do the opposite. They’re smaller and steadier, and they almost never come to market.

Georges takes the same view of the whole hype question, and he’s said so publicly: “I don’t think any neighborhood is overpriced, quite frankly. The market is transparent. Personally, I think Tribeca benefits from a hype premium and is a little expensive, but it still benefits from a high degree of attractivity.” The Hamptons premium is the same mechanism, priced in daylight.

Worth knowing if you’re comparing across the river: the same PropertyShark ranking put Alpine, New Jersey at $4,350,000, ahead of most of the Hamptons. There’s more of that in the richest zip codes in New Jersey.

What any of these towns cost to hold

Everybody watches the purchase price. Carrying cost is what surprises them.

Westchester’s average single-family property tax bill is $18,386, the highest of the 1,502 counties ATTOM measured in 2025. Scarsdale, Rye, Bronxville and Pound Ridge all sit inside that number. Nassau averages less, though the North Shore villages are not where an average lives.

Then the mansion tax: 1% of the price on any New York residence at $1 million or over, paid by the buyer. On a $3 million house that’s $30,000, due at closing, on top of everything else that’s due at closing. Our closing cost calculators run the whole set.

What the whole move costs, commute and transfer taxes included, is in our guide to the suburbs of NYC.

What we see in the field

The income list is a better shopping list than the price list. If you want a town where the neighbours are still there in February, read the Nassau and Westchester names. If you want the Hamptons, buy the Hamptons, but buy it knowing what it is.

Small villages have thin inventory. In a village of 231 people, a normal year might bring a handful of sales. Patience isn’t optional, and neither is being ready to move the day something lists.

The commission is a percentage, which is why it matters most up here. NestApple buyers receive an average rebate of $22,000 on an average purchase of about $1.1 million. On a $3 million North Shore house, up to 2% back is a different order of money, and it’s paid at closing.

Common questions

What is the richest town in New York, and does it hold the richest zip code too? By average household income, Tuxedo Park in Orange County, at $664,014 from Census 2024 data. Among towns over 5,000 residents, Scarsdale in Westchester at $612,591. Neither holds the priciest zip code; Sagaponack’s 11962 does.

What is the richest town on Long Island? Brookville, in Nassau County, at an average household income of $640,557. It ranks second in the state. By home price the answer is Sagaponack in Suffolk County, at a 2025 median sale price of $5,925,000.

Are the Hamptons the wealthiest part of New York? By what houses sell for, yes. By what residents earn, no. Nassau’s North Shore takes twelve of the state’s top twenty income places, and no Hamptons village appears in that twenty.

Why do so many towns show a median income of exactly $250,001? Because the Census caps its published median at $250,000 and reports the cap above that. Rankings sort by average income instead.

Is Scarsdale on Long Island? No, it’s in Westchester, on the Metro-North Harlem line. It’s the highest-ranked place on the income list with a real population, which is why it turns up in Long Island searches by mistake.

Buying in the wealthiest towns on Long Island

Neither list is a recommendation. The tape measure and the tax bill don’t care which ranking a town sits on, and up here the difference between a good purchase and an expensive one is almost never the town. It’s the house, its assessment, and what you paid against what it was worth.

We represent buyers across Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut, and hand back up to 2% of the price at closing. At these prices that’s not a rounding error. See how the buyer rebate works.

Written by Nicole Fishman Benoliel

Co-founder of NestApple and a lawyer admitted to the New York bar, not currently practising.