You might have to win the Washington lottery if you want to live in The Evergreen State's wealthiest places.
Now, if you've never been lucky, you might want to listen up if you're thinking about calling one of Washington's richest places home. We think that you can increase your luck if you take a look at HomeSnacks' list of the top ten richest cities in this Pacific Northwest Paradise for 2021.
But first, some insight into how we identified the top ten. We looked at the latest Census data from the American Community Survey for 120 Washington cities with more than 5,000 residents. And, folks, if you live in the greater Seattle and Tacoma you are definitely Washington's one percent and you are definitely rubbing elbows with the Joneses.
But, if you don't live where wealthy Washingtonians are 'rolling in the dough,' you're going to need to find a job that makes at least $96,836/year. And currently, the highest paying jobs are in healthcare and aviation. Next, you're going to have to have a vacation home in sunny San Diego, California so you have something to talk about at your fancy, rich parties.
So, want to know where Washington's finest live who only drink the cleanest Crystal Springs Water from Kent and only wear the Eddie Baur brand out of Bellevue? Keep reading.
Here are the 10 richest places in Washington for 2021:
In order to determine Washington's richest places, we also looked at the things that wealthy people find worthy of their time and efforts: high paying jobs and low poverty. To this, we gave every city that made Washington's richest places a Wealth score. Congrats to Washington's number one richest city, they scored a perfect 10/10!
So, what is Washington's richest place for 2021? According to the most recent data, that would be Sammamish.
To see the other cities in Washington where money REALLY does grow on trees, take a look below. And if you don't find what you're looking for there, head to the bottom.
Rich people not your cup of tea? Feel free to check out some more reading about Washington:
Population: 64,674 Rank Last Year: 1 (No Change) Median Income: $174,003 Unemployment Rate: 2.8% Poverty Rate: 2.4% More on Sammamish:Real Estate | Photos
Population: 13,480 Rank Last Year: 2 (No Change) Median Income: $145,580 Unemployment Rate: 3.1% Poverty Rate: 1.5% More on Snoqualmie:Real Estate | Photos
Population: 20,553 Rank Last Year: 13 (Up 3) Median Income: $103,750 Unemployment Rate: 3.2% Poverty Rate: 4.3% More on Mill Creek:Real Estate | Photos
How We Determined The Richest Places In Washington For 2021
The first thing that comes to most people's minds when they think about determining the richest places is to simply identify personal incomes. After all, rich people have really high salaries.
However, we don't believe that one statistic wholly encompasses what it means to be one of the "richest places". So we looked at this set of criteria from the newly released 2015-2019 American Community Survey:
Median household income is the most digestible way to understand how rich a place really is. The unemployment rate tries to capture the prospects for more people to become rich. If more people are employed, the richer the future looks.
After we collected the data for all 120 places with more than 5,000 people in Washington, we ranked each place from 1 to 120 for each of the criteria, with 1 being the richest.
We then averaged all the rankings for a place into a "Rich Score" with the place having the lowest overall Rich Score, Sammamish, crowned the "Richest City In Washington For 2021". You can download the data here.
You can learn more about the top ten below or skip to the end to see the rankings for all 120 places.
There You Have It - The Wealthiest Places In Washington For 2021
Like we said earlier, when we set out to identify the richest places in Washington, we weren't sure what we'd encounter, but it ended up being some of the best places to live in Washington.
When you look at the data, the cities and places mentioned above meet the criteria for being at the very top of the income ladder for everyone that lives there.
If you're curious enough, here are the poorest cities in Washington, according to data:
Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.
He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.
If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.