A new ranking of the Portland metro area's wealthiest ZIP codes stretches from the dense suburban tech corridor of Bethany and Cedar Mill in Washington County to the quiet riverside enclave of Dunthorpe just south of Portland's city limits, with household incomes across the list ranging from roughly $107,800 to more than $250,000. The spread illustrates just how differently wealth accumulates across a metro area that includes booming Oregon suburbs and tax-friendly Southwest Washington communities alike.
The list comes from American City Business Journals, which evaluated almost 33,200 ZIP codes nationwide to build its wealth index, according to Portland Business Journal. The Portland-area rankings cover ZIP codes across Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington and Yamhill counties in Oregon, plus Clark and Skamania counties in Washington, and the online version includes 79 ZIP codes total — 11 more than what ran in the print edition. Portland Business Journal senior researcher Brandon Sawyer compiled the list using Census Bureau 2020-2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, which draw on data collected between 2019 and 2024.
How The Wealth Index Is Built
The index does not simply rank ZIP codes by income. It weighs per capita income, median home value, median age and population density, then adjusts for land area to capture what the publication describes as the concentration of accumulated wealth within a geographic area. ZIP codes smaller than 0.5 square miles were excluded entirely, and the rankings were limited to ZIP codes with a poverty rate below 10%, a filter that also screened out areas with high population density but otherwise low-income levels and relatively high poverty rates.
That methodology helps explain why some of the region's most expensive-sounding neighborhoods don't necessarily top the list, while others with more modest sticker prices but concentrated wealth do. Washington County's 97229 ZIP code, covering Bethany and Cedar Mill, is Oregon's most populous ZIP code with 76,106 residents and a median household income of $161,570, according to Census Reporter. That density comes despite the presence of major corporate employers nearby, including Intel's Ronler Acres campus and Nike's world headquarters, both fixtures of the Washington County tech corridor.
Lake Oswego And Dunthorpe Show A Different Kind Of Wealth
Further south and east, the picture shifts toward lower density and higher per-household value. Lake Oswego's 97034 ZIP code recorded a median household income of $149,236, a per capita income of $101,884 and a median owner-occupied home value of $1,047,500, per the Oregon Gazetteer. Lake Oswego has long been recognized as one of Oregon's premier affluent residential suburbs, and those figures underscore why.
Even more striking is Dunthorpe, an unincorporated enclave in Multnomah County that sits along the Willamette River just south of Portland proper. The neighborhood recorded a median household income of $250,001 and a median home value of $1.41 million, according to Census Reporter — figures that make it an outlier even among the metro's other high-income pockets.
Camas And Salmon Creek Bring Washington State Into The Mix
The rankings also pull in Southwest Washington, where the tax picture looks very different than it does across the Columbia River. Camas, in Clark County, Washington, saw its 98607 ZIP code post a median household income of $128,318 and a median home value of $702,100, per the Washington Gazetteer. Camas has expanded rapidly as an affluent suburban hub on the Washington side of the metro.
Further north, the Mount Vista and Salmon Creek areas of Clark County, captured in the 98686 ZIP code named in the title of the original bizjournals.com ranking, recorded a median household income of $107,801 and a median home value of $546,100, according to Census Reporter. That ZIP code represents the upper postal boundary bookending the metro's wealth spectrum in the ranking's own framing.
Why Oregon And Washington Suburbs Diverge
The contrast between the two states' tax structures helps explain some of the migration patterns feeding these numbers. Individual and corporate income taxes made up roughly 71% of Oregon's total state tax revenue in 2025, the highest reliance on income tax of any state in the nation, according to an analysis reported by Axios. Washington state, by contrast, imposes no personal income tax, a divergence that can shape where high earners choose to settle in the bi-state metro.
Land-use rules add another layer. Metro's regional Urban Growth Boundary, managed across Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties under Oregon's 1973 Senate Bill 100, legally restricts urban expansion to preserve agricultural land while requiring a 20-year buildable land supply, according to Metro. That constraint on land supply is one factor cited in explaining Oregon's comparatively high home values relative to its Washington neighbors.
Earned wages tell yet another part of the story. Washington County led all Portland-area counties in net earned wage income at approximately $55,000 per capita in 2024, according to Oregon Employment Department figures reported by OregonLive, while Deschutes County led the state overall at $87,383 thanks to investment dividends and capital gains rather than wages alone — a distinction Hoodline previously explored in its report on Deschutes County's income lead.
A Booming Market Alongside A Housing Shortage
The wealth rankings arrive against a backdrop of a cooling but still pricey regional housing market. Real Estate Multiple Listing Service data showed the Portland metro area's median home sale price stood near $549,000 in 2025, even as closed transactions across the metro's top 79 ZIP codes dropped 4.2% year-over-year to 26,932, according to Portland Business Journal — the same 79 ZIP codes Hoodline covered in its look at the region's home sales leaders.
That concentration of wealth exists alongside a persistent affordability gap for renters. Metro's 2018 voter-approved $652.8 million housing bond is on track to deliver approximately 5,600 affordable housing units across three counties, but the Portland Housing Bureau estimates the city alone faces a deficit of nearly 59,000 affordable rental units, with cost-burdened renters spending over 30% of their income on housing. Hoodline detailed that shortfall in its earlier report on the housing bond's limited reach.
For now, the wealth index stands as a snapshot of how unevenly prosperity is distributed across a metro area that spans dense tech suburbs, low-density riverside estates and cross-border tax havens alike — a spread that runs, as the original ranking put it, from ZIP code 97003 all the way to 98686.
