Report: Old Westbury ranks among the nation's wealthiest communities

The village of Old Westbury is one of the wealthiest communities in the nation, ranking among the most exclusive zones of Silicon Valley and coastal Florida, a new report shows.

The village's ZIP code, 11568, claimed 18th place among the country's highest-income  ZIP codes, with residents earning an average household income of nearly $640,000, an analysis by Bloomberg of 2015 Internal Revenue Service and census data shows. That marks a 36 percent increase from five years earlier, according to the report. Homes in Old Westbury sold for a median price of $2.32 million in February, Bloomberg reported.

The village's residents probably have benefited from the stock market rebound, said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Manhattan-based appraisal company Miller Samuel. The S&P 500 stock index hit a closing low of 676.53 in March 2009, but it had rebounded to nearly 2,044 by the end of 2015. It was trading at 2,648 midday Wednesday.

With many Old Westbury families benefiting from generations of long-established wealth, their net worth "has risen substantially" as the market has surged, Miller said.

Many other communities on the list are centers of the technology, entertainment and finance industries, Miller said. 

The nation's richest community was Fisher Island off Miami, where residents earned an average household income of $2.54 million, Bloomberg reported. No. 4 on the list was Palo Alto, California, with an average income of $1.175 million. Westchester's Harrison ranked fifth, with an average income of about $976,000. Los Angeles' Century City ranked seventh, with an average income of nearly $906,000. No New York City ZIP codes made the list of top 20 communities.

Old Westbury landed two spots above Greenwich, Connecticut, where residents enjoyed an average income of $626,000.

The new federal tax law, which offers fewer tax incentives for homeownership, could prompt more New Yorkers to move to Florida, which has no state income tax, said Miller, who was set to speak at a seminar and property fair on Wednesday at the Garden City Hotel about relocating to or investing in real estate in Florida. Nearly 500 people have registered to attend, Miller said. 

Of those decamping to Florida, Miller said, “there’s certainly a possibility that that population will expand as a result of the tax law."