Oregon, like its northern neighbor Washington, has changed significantly over the last 50 years. From a population of just over 2 million in 1970, by 2023 that figure had risen by 102.4%, to more than 4.23 million. Oregon is home to the headquarters of countless corporations, including Nike, Precision Castparts, and Fred Meyer, among others. Thus, not coincidentally, Oregon state is home to a substantial amount of wealth. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the top 1% takes home 16.6% of all income in Oregon.
Recently, we analyzed and identified the richest cities in Washington. Continuing this Pacific Northwest investigation, this study analyzed 428 cities (defined as “places” by the Census Bureau; see below) in Oregon with complete data from the Census Bureau, in terms of their median household income, mean (average) household income, median home value, and median property taxes paid per year, to come up with a list of the 50 richest cities in the state.
Read on to find out what the richest city in Oregon is, plus the top 50 wealthiest cities in the state overall.
What Are the Richest Cities in Oregon?
To fully capture the wealth of these cities, we didn’t want to just look up the median household income for each one. Instead, we sourced critical financial data from the Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey. Once these data points were compiled, they were scored using a four-factor system taking into account: 1) Median household income; 2) mean (average) household income; 3) median home value; 4) median property taxes paid.
It is important to note some of the quirks that the Census Bureau does with its data. For certain factors, the Census numbers have upper limits, so there’s no exact value for certain factors. For example, for median household income, the Census Bureau has an upper limit of “$250,000+”, so no median incomes are recorded above $250,000. For median home value, the upper limit is “$2,000,000+”. For median property taxes paid, the upper limit is “$10,000+”. For these reasons, the mean household income (which is the same as average household income) dataset is critical because the Census Bureau has exact figures for it. All four of these metrics were scored, added up, and then ranked by the cities’ combined scores.
There’s an additional point to explain about how the Census Bureau treats “places.” The Census Bureau has a category of geographic units called Census-designated places — CDPs. The Census, more or less, treats CDPs as cities — their terminology is “place” — and so will this list of the richest cities in Oregon. But if you see cities on this list that you see as, say, neighborhoods, you’re not wrong; they just happen to be treated as cities by the Census Bureau.
You’ll find a table detailing the top 50 richest cities in Oregon and their associated dollar figures for each metric, below:
The No. 1 richest place in Oregon in this ranking is Dunthorpe, which is a CDP and an unincorporated suburb of Portland. It is just south of the Portland city limits, with the Willamette River forming its eastern border. Here, in Dunthorpe, the median household income exceeds $250,000 per year. This is reflected in Dunthorpe’s very high average household income of $449,633. The median home value, as reported in the Census, is over $1.5 million. And, not surprisingly, the median property taxes paid by households is over $10,000 a year.
The second richest place in Oregon is Tetherow, a CDP in Deschutes County, following within the Bend metro area. Tetherow has an exceptionally high median household income of $195,586, and has an even higher average household income of $246,753. These wage levels make sense considering that 43.6% of all occupations in Tetherow are Management Occupations, followed by Business & Financial Operations Occupations at 18.2%, according to Data USA. The reported median home value in the Census is over $1.57 million. That is substantially higher than the median for Bend, which is $736,601, according to Zillow.
Coming in as the No. 3 richest place in Oregon is Stafford, an unincorporated community, classified as a hamlet, in Clackamas County. Stafford has over 630 total households. The average household income is over $215,000 a year, while the median household income is $180,967. The top industries, in terms of employment, are Health Care & Social Assistance (23.9% of the workforce), Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services (17.8% of the workforce), and Educational Services (9.54% of the workforce), according to Data USA. Management Occupations account for nearly a third of the workforce in Stafford. The median home value is more than $1.12 million. The typical household pays a median of over $10,000 in property taxes per year.
The Bottom Line on the Richest Cities in Oregon
Many of the richest places in Oregon can be found in its largest metro area, Portland. But many are not. The No. 4 richest city, Neahkahnie, is a CDP and unincorporated community north of Manzanita on the Pacific coast. Among the top 10 wealthiest cities in Oregon, Lake Oswego is the largest, with 16,649 households. There, the median household income is $127,252, with the mean household income almost $70,000 higher than that. And, according to Zillow, the median home value in Lake Oswego is $897,421.