St. Louis Has 2 'Preposterously Undervalued' ZIP Codes

Another Missouri town also made the list

Jun 16, 2023 at 9:55 am

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City Nerd, a YouTube channel about urbanism, walkable cities and public transportation, recently found that two ZIP codes in St. Louis are a great deal for the rent price.

Ray Delahanty, the host of City Nerd, crunched a huge data set that included all of the available apartments for rent in the United States. Using that, he calculated the median rent per square foot for each ZIP code. (He says he went with median instead of mean so very expensive outliers wouldn't throw off the data.)

Delahanty then looked at the ZIP codes' walkability score to determine if it was an area with any amenities. (It's easy to have cheap rent in some backwater.) And the cheapest cities that also were walkable and urban with activities and entertainment made the Top 10 list.

The result is the video "10 Affordable Zip Codes Where You Can Live Without a Car."
Already a fan of St. Louis, Delahanty called the whole city perpetually underrated when he introduced his No. 2 most affordable ZIP code as 63118, which includes Benton Park, Tower Grove East, Marine Villa, Gravois Park and Cherokee Street.

The average rent there is $1.12 per square foot and has a walkability score of 82. Delahanty also highlighted a single rental unit that was available in each of the ZIP codes. For the 63118, he highlighted 3455 Crittenden Street, a one-bedroom, one-bathroom that had a bay window and fireplace and rented for $1,095 per month.

"To me, this is just ridiculous, like I don't even understand how we live in a world where this is a dollar a square foot," Delahanty said as he showed the exterior of the brick building on Google Maps.

But Delahanty, who had already praised Cherokee Street as his "textbook definition of a great urban main street, cool and interesting and diverse," hit viewers with a bonus St. Louis ZIP Code: 63104, which includes Soulard.

He said that the ZIP code could have made the list on its own (it would have been further down because rent there is $1.35 per square foot), but Delahanty admitted that he talks about St. Louis too much on his channel, so he put a Lexington ZIP code on the list instead. Still he couldn't leave out the ZIP, which he describes as phenomenal.

"What can possibly be better than St. Louis, Missouri," Delahanty asked unironically before introducing the No. 1 ZIP code on the list. And to that we say nothing! But he said Columbia, Missouri, and the 65201 ZIP code, which had a mean rent of just under $1 per square foot.

Best Neighborhood to Live In: Benton Park

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About The Author

Rosalind Early

Rosalind is the former editor-in-chief of the Riverfront Times. She formerly worked for Washington University's alumni magazine and St. Louis Magazine. In 2018, she was selected as a Rising Leader of Color by the Theatre Communications Group. In 2014, she was selected as an Emerging Leader by FOCUS St. Louis...