Search "Scarsdale, NY" on any listing site and you can pull up homes that share nothing but a mailing address. One might sit two blocks from Scarsdale High School. Another might be in Eastchester. A third might be in New Rochelle. All three will read "Scarsdale, NY" at the top of the listing, because all three sit inside the same postal zip code, 10583.
This is not a rare mix-up. It is how the zip code is built.
One Mailing Address, Six Governments
The United States Postal Service assigns 10583 to a single "preferred city" name, Scarsdale, for mail-sorting purposes. That naming convention has nothing to do with municipal boundaries, school district lines, or who collects your property tax check. A resident-organized petition seeking to split the zip code lays out the scope of the overlap: more than half of the roughly 40,000 people living in 10583 reside outside the Village of Scarsdale's actual boundaries and pay no taxes to the Village or to the Scarsdale Union Free School District.
The scale of that mismatch becomes clearer once you compare land area. The Village of Scarsdale covers about 6.683 square miles, according to its own government profile. The zip code built around it covers roughly 12.4 square miles. Nearly half the ground carrying a Scarsdale mailing address has never been inside Scarsdale Village at all.
The municipalities sharing 10583 with the Village include:
- Eastchester, in neighborhoods along Garth Road, Green Knolls, Greenvale, and North End
- Edgemont, an unincorporated section of the Town of Greenburgh, sharing nearly the entire zip code with the Village except for a small pocket that uses Hartsdale's zip instead
- The Town of Mamaroneck, in the Murdock Woods section
- New Rochelle, across Bloomingdale Estates, Dorchester Hills, Scarsdale Downs, Scarsdale Parks, Stratton Hills, Wilmot, and Wilmot Woods
- Yonkers, in the Beech Hill section
That list comes from a neighborhood-level breakdown of what local residents call "Scarsdale PO" addresses, meaning Scarsdale for postal purposes only.
The Same Name, Two Different Places
One overlap is worth calling out on its own. Scarsdale Village organizes itself into five internal geographic regions: Edgewood, Fox Meadow, Greenacres, Heathcote, and Quaker Ridge, per the same government profile referenced above. New Rochelle, a separate city with its own government and school district, also has a section called Quaker Ridge that carries the 10583 zip code.
Two places, same name, same mailing city, entirely different governments and school systems. If a buyer's search turns up a "Quaker Ridge" listing, the zip code alone will not tell them which one they are looking at.
Why the Median Price You See Isn't the Price You Think
Here is where this stops being a curiosity and starts affecting how you read the market. Property tax data providers, market reports, and portal medians frequently key off the mailing city, not the actual taxing jurisdiction. When a tax analytics tool reports a figure for "Scarsdale," it may be blending Village parcels with Edgemont, Eastchester, or New Rochelle parcels that simply share the address label. One such tool, Ownwell, lists a median effective property tax rate of 1.97% for Scarsdale as of 2026, well above the New York state median of 1.90% and more than double the 1.02% U.S. median, with a median annual bill of $25,605 against a $2,400 national median. Those numbers are useful for understanding the general tax weight of the area, but they cannot tell you, on their own, whether a specific parcel sits inside the Village that actually sets that rate.
The gap between jurisdictions inside the same zip code is not hypothetical. In 2015, a property revaluation brought Edgemont assessments in line with full market value, the same standard Scarsdale Village already used. Once the numbers were put on equal footing, the Edgemont Community Council's analysis found a blended tax rate of 2.24% in Scarsdale, or $22,400 a year on a $1 million home, against a blended rate of 3.34% in Edgemont, or $33,400 a year on the same value. That is an $11,000 annual gap on comparably valued homes sitting inside the same 10583 zip code.
The disparity was significant enough that Greenburgh's own town supervisor flagged it internally. In a 2016 email later obtained by the Edgemont Community Council, Supervisor Paul Feiner wrote:
"I don't understand why Edgemont has to be over 3% if Scarsdale can charge only 2.24%."
That comparison is now roughly a decade old and both jurisdictions have reassessed and rebudgeted since. It is not a current number to plug into a spreadsheet. What it demonstrates, and what still holds structurally today, is that the Village of Scarsdale and the unincorporated areas sharing its mailing address answer to different budgets, different school levies, and different tax rolls. A median price or tax figure attached to "Scarsdale" without a parcel-level check is telling you about a blend, not a place.
Different Governments Mean Different Services, Too
Taxes are only half of it. Scarsdale operates as a coterminous town and village with its own elected mayor, six trustees, and its own police, fire, and public works departments funded through the Village budget.
Edgemont has none of that. As an unincorporated section of the Town of Greenburgh, it has no elected representatives of its own. Police coverage today comes from the Greenburgh Police Department at a ratio Edgemont's own incorporation research group puts at about 2.7 officers per 1,000 residents, a number the group cites when arguing that alternatives such as a Westchester County contract or a dedicated village force could push coverage above 3 officers per 1,000. That difference in governance structure, not just tax rate, is part of what has driven an active push toward Edgemont incorporation in recent years.
For a buyer, the practical takeaway is simple. A "Scarsdale, NY" address does not by itself tell you who answers your 911 call, who plows your street, or who sets the budget behind your tax bill.
How to Confirm What You're Actually Buying
Before you get attached to a listing on the strength of its mailing address, run through a short checklist:
- Ask for the parcel's actual municipality, not the mailing city, from the listing agent or the town or village assessor's roll.
- Get the school district in writing. Scarsdale Union Free School District, Eastchester Union Free School District, Edgemont Union Free School District, and New Rochelle's and Yonkers' own school systems all have addresses inside 10583.
- Pull the most recent full tax bill and look for separate line items for county, town or village, school, and any special districts, rather than relying on a single blended percentage.
- Confirm which police, fire, and public works department has jurisdiction over the specific address.
This is also a habit worth expecting from your agent before you ever see a listing. At Julia B. Fee Sotheby's, where I list and sell homes across Scarsdale and the surrounding towns, agents routinely spell out the actual school district by name in a listing description rather than letting the mailing address do the talking. That kind of disclosure is not a courtesy. It is the difference between comparing two homes and comparing two entirely different tax and service structures that happen to share an envelope format.
A Few Straight Answers
Does a 10583 zip code guarantee Scarsdale Village schools? No. More than half of the zip code sits outside the Village and outside the Scarsdale Union Free School District, according to the petition data cited above. Confirm the district by parcel, not by mailing address.
Are taxes always higher outside the Village? Not universally, and rates shift with each jurisdiction's budget cycle and reassessment schedule. What the historical Edgemont comparison shows is that the gap can be substantial and that it is driven by which government sets the levy, not by the zip code on the envelope.
How do I find out which town or village a specific listing is actually in? Ask directly, and ask for it in writing. The assessor's roll for the property's actual municipality will list the taxing jurisdiction, the school district, and the assessed value, all of which the mailing address will not show you.
If you are comparing Scarsdale to other Westchester towns and want to know what a specific address actually costs and who actually serves it, I am happy to walk through the parcel-level details with you before you make an offer, not after. Elana Zimmerman works with buyers across Scarsdale and the surrounding towns to sort exactly this kind of thing out early. Your Next Chapter Starts Here.
