patrick.net

Forbes loves making lists of rich people and expensive things, and a couple weeks ago they published their new 500 Most Expensive Zip Codes feature. This has been an annual feature.

Last year I picked out the Northern California zips as a series of Burbed articles on high-priced places to live. When I published this year's article today, one of the commenters noticed a HUGE mistake in the Forbes data. Every single DOM (Days on Market) was 200, without exception.

They've got a big table of the zips that had different numbers, and just looking at a few of them, you can see how they messed up, probably a simple computer error copying the wrong field. I don't know if this made it to the print edition or just online, but it's a big-time screwup from a major magazine. Thanks again to Burbed readers Divasm and nomadic for catching this.

And if you'd like to know more about the Northern California zips that made it to the Top 50, it's all there in today's Burbed article. Here are the top 50, more detail in the article. The most expensive zip is Alpine, NJ (Bergen County), which was also the top zip in 2009, but not 2010.

As you can see there is a heavy concentration of San Mateo and Santa Clara zips, less so Marin, one in Monterey, and nothing in the East Bay. I call bs on Big Sur in the article due to it reflecting one sale for all of 2010. Zips 51-99 next weekend.

2. Atherton 94027
4. Hillsborough 94010
18. Los Altos Hills 94022
23. Monte Sereno 95030
24. Los Altos 94022
26. Big Sur 93920
31. Woodside 94062
36. Palo Alto 94301
39. Portola Valley 94028
40. Los Gatos 95030
42. Tiburon/Belvedere 94920
47. Saratoga 95070
49. Kentfield 94904

(also submitted to link section)