How Many Different Residences Have The Same Exact Nine Digit ZIP Code As You Do? (ZIP+4 Code)

You can do a reverse ZIP+4 lookup at https://lookups.melissa.com/zip4/zip4/.

Just an FYI, the ZIP+4 narrows down the location to a small area, but not necessarily an singular building. My +4 is shared for instance by my neighbor to my left and a neighbor across the street.

My first GPS was a TomTom One and you could input the 5-digit zip code in place of a city/state to aid in a search. I know that for many years people have been asking for Waze to accept ZIP+4 and it didn’t. What its capability is today however I don’t know as I’m not a user.

My zip+4 code has 9 households, all on my street, contiguous lots on both sides of street. I guess that's a good thing as I probably would have a good chance of retrieving a mis-delivered package if it was left at one of my nearby neighbors.

Some interesting systems are being developed to clarify location information.

Let's take the restaurant Fogo de Chao Brazilian Steakhouse at 155 Main Street, King of Prussia as an example. We can of course define the location as 40.08350 N latitude x 75.40471 W longitude (or the deg/min/sec) equivalents.

You can also open Google Maps and using what is called a Google Plus code find the same location. If you want to try it open Google Maps and put "3HMW+94 King of Prussia" (without the quote marks) into the search bar, hit enter and you will get the restaurant. Google Plus codes were developed by the Google office in Zurich Switzerland so this method tends to be used in Europe.

Another system gaining popularity, is the What3words mapping system. Go to https://what3words.com/clip.apples.leap and at the top left where it opens at clip.apples.leap put in "props.most.lamps" (again, without the quote marks) and hit the enter key. It will take you on a map to 155 Main Street; King of Prussia, PA. Surprisingly, every 3 meter x 3 meter square (about 9-1/2 feet x 9-1/2 feet) in the world can be described by three words! Emergency systems in Europe are using this system as an alternative to latitude and longitude since about 2014.

There is also the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS) used by the military. Go to https://legallandconverter.com/p50.html and at the top put in "18T VK 65496 37103" (without the quotes and watch spacing) and it will yield the coordinates of 155 Main Street in King of Prussia.

I was playing with https://what3words.com/clip.apples.leap a few minutes ago. My detached one car garage is in nine different "What3Words"!

The Google Plus codes show many different codes just on our five acre farm.
https://plus.codes/map

What you describe for “what3words” can happen. The grid is defined by “squares” that are approximately 10 x 10 feet. Even my 2-car garage overlaps three of the defined squares.

As far as the precision of a Google plus code it is indicated by the number of digits after the "+" sign. 2-digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 13.7 by 13.7 meters; 3-digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 2.7 by 3.5 meters; 4-digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 0.5 by 0.8 meters. For more info, see https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/.

In canada, a1a 1a1 6 alpha numeric
My postal code, 2 houses, me and nextdoor to the left
My other neighbour to the right, 11, the apartment building has 11 units
In australia, my house there, about 1200, have the same post code 0862, they are all postboxes in the post office, and the houses are spread out 200km x 170km way out in the bush

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#ZIP+4

Often it's all the houses in a single block on one side of the street, but there are many more complex situations.

That's interesting. My house's Plus code is MJRX+M9 and to think that that code is unique to the entire rest of the world is indeed interesting. What's as interesting is that if I take 26x26x26x26x26 that's only around 12 million (I don't know what to do with the 9) which doesn't seem to offer enough probabilities to cover the entire planet. Hmmm.

Phil

Explore the link https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/technology/ for an explanation of how it is done. An alternative explanation (and perhaps better) is at https://www.geoapify.com/google-plus-code-as-a-location-code

By the way how do you feel about your address being leopard.aviators.fluency in the What3words system. (My conversion may not be perfect).

ring, etc., shows the irrelevant nature of the +4.

We routinely get wrong mail delivered, which always made me nervous about 3 things. The sewage, county, and school tax bills for which a hard copy is needed. But never missed getting them in 21 years.

I can see from the Blink camera how little thought nor care is afforded by the postman in tossing the mail onto our steps. Packages it's as if he's a football QB. Is he really even looking at those numbers? And I don't exactly know why my wife is compelled to give the guy a tip every year. I don't know if they're even allowed to accept them but he does.

The funny thing about PA is if I got the story right, our so-called towns are nothing more than a zip code that came about in 1963. What drives our school system and taxes is the township in which we live in.

To really make this official? My wife worked for Wells Fargo. For PA, the HR in Minneapolis has a special form. Basically it says what school district do you work in, what school district do you live in. This determines withholding from the paycheck.

In other words, a "town" or zip code, could be in sometimes 3 different school districts. Example, a prestigious place like Wayne, PA. Or Bryn Mawr, PA. I'm not 100% on 3 different school districts, but the above are clearly in 2 depending on the street. Meaning, for most people, it's important to ask what school district the house is in, as you will not be able to tell when the realtor states the house is in Wayne or Bryn Mawr.

It would be interesting to know what the zip+4 is even used for in 2023. And it's amazing I actually know mine lol

What3words converts every 10 x 10 ft square on earth into 3 words. A huge number of emergency services can link to the 3 words and locate a person in an emergency. Much easier for a person in distress to give 3 simple words, than a 7 or 8 digit GPS coordinates.

Your what3words coordinates for the steakhouse would be refrains.flirted.nephews

…the 4 digits represent specific delivery routes within delivery areas. This extra detail means an even more precise matching to a more granular level. It could represent a handful of houses on one side of a street, or even a single building that receives a high volume of mail.

Also, a ZIP+4 address has been verified to exist. Where this matters is in use of some terminology. Use “Road” or “Avenue” instead of “Rd” or “Av” and again in theory a problem could exist. I have taken items to a post office with Avenue for instance, and the clerk asks prior to printing the bar code label do I mean “Av”. In some instances he shows me the computer screen listing alternatives.

IMO much of this is driven by bulk mailing. I believe there is a discount for using ZIP+4 on bulk mailing. Personally I think the rates should be raised tremendously on bulk mail and lowered on consumer mail. That would reduce much of the crap that ends up in landfills. But that is another topic! 1st class rates go to $0.68 on 01/24/2024 by the way. Adding to this content I was just advised that the Philadelphia Inquirer has “partnered” with USPS and the paper will now be delivered by mail.

Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 ... IS spread across 3 school districts, Radnor, Haverford, Lower Merion. 3 townships, two counties.

What a lot of folks get confused about, and most do not know, is that zip codes came about to make mail easier to sort and they are attached to Census-designated places.

I used to live in Upper Darby Township, but my zip code, 19050 had a Lansdowne designation. Lansdowne is a neighboring borough. People insisted I lived in Lansdowne Borough because my address included Lansdowne, PA. I didn't, I paid taxes to Upper Darby, if I needed police it was Upper Darby that would come, etc.

An even larger example is Media, PA, a very small borough in Delaware county. The zip of Media, PA 19063 encompases, Media Borough, Middletown Township, Upper Providence Township, Chester Heights Borough, Rose Valley Borough and parts of Nether Providence Township, Aston Township and Marple Township, a very large area.

Where I live now is another example, my zip name is the same as the next township over.

Zip codes are a federal thing, town names are a local thing, the two do not have anything to do with each other, except for similar names.

That is interesting but seems confusing. So you have to know what 3 words is used by the system ahead of time to find where it is on the map?

It's not quite that way. If you have the app and you need to report the location for an emergency, or save the location of your car in a huge parking lot, or have an easy reference for someone to find where your camping spot is, simply tap on the app and it will give you the 3 words.

There is also a site that will allow you to translate GPS coordinates to what3words. : https://what3words.com/products/batch-converter

Unfortunately, it's not a Google, where all sorts of places are listed, but it wasn't really developed with that in mind. Consider this. You're in any one of the scenarios, listed above. I've randomly chosen a location for comparison.
GPS: 43.4222989,-80.4443869
w3w:majority.spill.picked

Which is easier to relay to someone. Three simple words or 9 digits of a gps location, with the risk of someone mistyping 1e or 2 digits.
Once the person enters the location into the app search, you can tap Navigate and it gives at least 2 options. One is to use Google maps and it will let Google direct you. The other, is to use w3w app, but Google is probably better.

That link didn't work, but this one did: https://lookups.melissa.com/home/zip4/zip4/

I looked mine up, and, interestingly, it included an address that would be next to my house, but doesn't actually exist. There is a house where that address would be, but it is at an intersection with another street, and the front door is turned 90 degrees from mine, so the actual address includes the intersecting street instead of my street. The only explanation I can come up with is that those +4 codes were assigned when the developer was just starting to establish the individual home lots, before any detailed individual house plans were created. In that case, houses at a street intersection could face either street, so maybe +4 codes were assigned for both streets, knowing one would be unused. Just a wild guess.

21 houses... my entire street.

That was interesting, I know a lot about zip codes in general and always thought the plus 4 would lead to one house. My zip+4 goes to the 5 houses on the block on my side of the road.

My old house was a row home and the zip+4 goes to 50 homes.

Ok, that's makes it easier, especially for a large unfamiliar parking lot. Thank you for the explanation.

If +4 defined a single home, Chicago (Zip = 60629) would likely be in trouble. The population is about 115,000. Having said that not everyone owns a home and the population is decreasing every time I watch the news!

I suppose there are some advantages to these different mapping systems, but it is hard for me to see how they are better than the decimal geographic coordinate system (longitude,latitude) based on degrees that we are all familiar with. Near the equator, decimal coordinates carried out to 5 digits to the right of the decimal point gets you to a precision of approximately 3.7 feet. Of course coordinates represent a point and not a rectangle like the grid systems, but if you think of coordinates carried out to 5 decimals as the center of a square, at the equator, it would be a square of ~3.7' on each side. Seems much simpler than these other grid systems.

Yes, I didn't think of that.

Take the City of Philadelphia. The combined population for all ZIP Codes in Philadelphia, PA is 1,604,167. Philadelphia has 50 different standard zip code areas. The city also has "unique" zip codes. Unique ZIPs are assigned to businesses, government agencies, universities, and other entities which receive a large volume of mail. Philadelphia has 30 of these. Lastly they have what is called PO Box zip codes. There are 7 PO Box zip codes.

Read more: https://www.zip-codes.com/city/pa-philadelphia.asp

For the elaboration.

What I've come to realize is my parents' thinking may be outdated, or it is, today.

They thought way back when, buy the house you can afford, in the best school district. If the house is below the median of that place, even better. Never get a big house in a bad school district, or the most expensive house on the block. I see people doing the opposite of the above all the time, today.

My buddy's logic. In FLA, our schools are useless, so whether they are good or bad, is inconsequential. We have to send our kids to private. This was in Lakeland, FL. His house was a mcmansion with taxes less than mine in PA, and I live in a 1300 sq ft house. Now contrast that to U of FL being one of the top public universities today, I think ranked 22 overall. The acceptance is so low, it's about the same as Harvard in my time. Of course Harvard, despite declining applications as of late due to all the controversy, those schools are in the 3.x% acceptance. Med school was higher than that in my time.

Where he lives today is St Augustine, and they have 2 HS's. One is top notch nationally, the other is decent. He said doesn't matter, it's the attitudes/mentality that kids will encounter in the public school system that drives them to private.

So basically not caring about the schools invalidates my parents' thinking.

But back to the zips....I recall a friend looking for houses in Wayne, all different prices, but she was careful to verify which school district. She wanted TE first, Radnor second, and nothing else third. third would be upper merion, so there are 3 in Wayne. 3 townships under one zip code....

Oh my god, I get all creamy with the very thought!

Phil

I was always of the opinion that the My zip+4 code was specific to my home address. I am surprised to know this is not the case. Live and learn.

Today I Learned:

There are places in the US so remote, They Don't Have a ZIP
As you can see from the map, not everywhere in the US is assigned a ZIP code. Remote and especially rural areas of the country do not have enough deliverable addresses to create a mail route. Without mail delivery, a ZIP is not needed. If you are looking to get off the grid, these areas are some of the most remote places within the country.
https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/images/zip-codes/places...

This map, however, shows all of Minnesota within a ZIP code and seems to contradict my earlier post.

https://www.mapsofindia.com/world-map/usa/minnesota/county-z...

USPS created 9-digit ZIP Codes to ensure fast and accurate mailings. They indicate the actual path the mail should travel and usually they narrow down to somewhere between ten to twenty homes.
I live on a cul-de-sac street. My 4 digits appears to refer to any even address - from 200 to 236 (they aren't all used so maybe there is 10-12). Odd addresses have a different code (other side of street).

That gets you right to the exact address. I don't know how prevalent that is.

New York City used to use two digit postal codes.

I had no idea it was this granular. We live on a Cul de Sac and it turns out all the even numbered houses share my Plus 4 and all the odd numbered houses share a slightly different Plus 4. The last number is different for the even and odd houses.

I believe ZIP+6 is a commercially devised system and has little to do with the USPS system. See https://dataladder.com/zip-4-2-equals-zip-plus-6/. Quoting from the USPS Zip code manual fails to mention anything about an extra two digits.

“The most complete ZIP Code is a nine-digit number consisting of five digits, a hyphen, and four digits, which the USPS describes by its trademark ZIP+4. The correct format for a numeric ZIP+4 code is five digits, a hyphen, and four digits. The first five digits represent the 5-digit ZIP Code; the sixth and seventh digits (the first two after the hyphen) identify an area known as a sector; the eighth and ninth digits identify a smaller area known as a segment. Together, the final four digits identify geographic units such as a side of a street between intersections, both sides of a street between intersections, a building, a floor or group of floors in a building, a firm within a building, a span of boxes on a rural route, or a group of post office boxes to which a single USPS employee makes delivery.”

Melissa advises that nine lots share my ZIP+4.

It was a discussion they were having back about 15 years ago. The company I worked for has equipment that works with and sprays the bar codes. Like I said, it was a discussion and I don't know how far it went. Commercial or not it could have been something they wanted to do with bulk mailing.

I live in a large coop complex in nyc. Each 2 or 3 floors have its own +4 zip code.

of the USPS, our mail came 8 pm yesterday. Is that overtime, or it just takes a long time to do a route? It does not come the same time on any given day...

I think it is because of new subs all the time and no training on the route before they are sent out. I can tell when my regular carrier is on and off.

…on the same side of my street uses the same last 4 digits. Interesting!

Here's a link to a number of advances, in w3w.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVHLSrAMtgI

There was some discussion on the Zumo User Forums about using what3words' to find locations & send them to Garmin Zumo XT via the Garmin Drive App.

https://www.zumouserforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2607