Tiny UES ZIP Code Is Among America's Only All-Rental Areas: Study

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — If you walk past the Pavilion apartment building on East 77th Street, you may notice nothing remarkable about the 17-story, white-brick tower.

In fact, it has an odd distinction: the rental building contains its own ZIP code, 10162, which stands out as one of just five ZIPs across the United States where the entire population rents their homes.

That's according to a new study by RentCafe, which examined, in part, the U.S. ZIP codes with the highest percentage of renters. All of those top five are small: 10162 has an estimated 1,240 residents, and the other all-rental ZIP codes in Nashville, San Francisco, Dallas and Forth Worth all have fewer than 6,400 residents.

L-shaped 10162 runs along East 77th Street between York Avenue and the FDR Drive. Besides the Pavilion building at 500 East 77th St., it also covers John Jay Park.

The RentCafe study, released last week, focused on the 101 ZIP codes across the U.S. that switched from a majority-homeowner to majority-renter population within the last decade. A rapidly-developing neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio saw the most dramatic increase in renters, followed by a ZIP code in the heart of Downtown Chicago.

No New York ZIP codes were among the areas that saw a big shift from ownership to rentals in the last few years — perhaps because its tenant-centric real estate market has already been set in stone for decades.

Indeed, New York, long known as a city of renters, makes up a big chunk of the list of most rental-heavy ZIP codes in America: 44 of the nation's top 316 ZIPs are within the five boroughs, according to the study.

That includes the Upper East Side's five other ZIP codes, which had the following fraction of renters as of 2020, according to the RentCafe study:

• 10065: 65.5 percent renters, 19,660 renters overall (173rd in U.S.)
• 10128: 65.1 percent renters, 37,542 renters overall (177th in U.S.)
• 10021: 50.5 percent renters, 21,047 renters overall (312th in U.S.)
• 10028: 62.2 percent renters, 29,765 renters overall (201st in U.S.)
• 10075: 56.0 percent renters, 12,373 renters overall (259th in U.S.)

Aside from tiny 10162, New York City's most renter-heavy ZIP code is 10037, covering a few dozen blocks north of 130th Street in Harlem — 94.5 percent of residents are renters in that ZIP, which includes the large Lenox Terrace and Savoy Park apartment complexes.

Built in 1964, the Pavilion building that makes up all of 10162 was "perhaps the largest, most impressive high-rise luxury apartment of its day," according to the building's real estate listing.