When people leave big cities for smaller towns, the decision often comes down to cheaper rents — the assumption is that the town has a lower cost of living. But that’s not always the case: A recent study from LendingTree found that rents in some US towns are comparable to those in expensive metropolitan areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The study analyzed census data from the 2022 American Community Survey to rank 50 “micropolitan areas” (called “towns” in the study and defined by the Census Bureau as having populations between 10,000 and 50,000) based on median home prices. The researchers then paired each micropolitan area with a larger metropolitan area with a comparable median home price.
Luxury resorts are among the more expensive places to live. Vineyard Haven, a small city in Massachusetts that includes the entire island of Martha’s Vineyard and the nearby Elizabeth Islands, was found to have the most expensive median home price, at $998,100. In the San Francisco metropolitan area, the median home price was similar across the nation, at $1.073 million. But while San Francisco’s median home price was nearly nine times the local median income, Vineyard Haven’s was about 11 times the local median income, making it more unaffordable.
The winter getaway micro-areas of Jackson, Wyoming, and Breckenridge, Colorado, took second and third place with median home prices of $847,300 and $760,000, respectively. They are considered comparable to the Los Angeles metropolitan area and its median of $772,000, but Los Angeles’ home price-to-income ratio (8.7) is still higher than Breckenridge (7.6) and Jackson (8.3).
Of the 20 most expensive micropolitan areas, only one, Los Alamos, New Mexico, had a median home price less than four times the area’s median income: 3.04 times. In the other 19 areas, home prices ranged from 4.2 times (Juneau, Alaska) to 10.7 times (Vineyard Haven), putting most people out of reach.
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