WalletHub states that with migration to the city’s slowing, it is the smaller suburbs reaping the benefits. Its latest poll found that Leawood, Kansas, to be the best small city to live in for 2019 [1].
Leawood came in at No. 2 for affordability, No. 68 in economic health, and No. 4 in the lowest housing costs. Southlake, Texas, was found to have lowest housing costs among the markets surveyed.
WalletHub compared more than 1,200 U.S. cities with populations between 25,000 and 100,000
across 42 key indicators of livability.
Santa Barabara, California, was reported as having the highest average housing costs. The Villages, Florida, had the highest homeownership rate, while the lowest homeownership rate was in West Hollywood, California.
Los Altos, California, had the highest median-annual household income at $208,309, which WalletHub says is 10.1 times higher than in East St. Louis, Illinois, whose median income is $20,659.
A study by LendingTree [2]found that with an average cost of $1.19 million, a median-priced home in the Golden Gate City is worth an average of 5.4 homes in one of the nation’s largest cities.
Additionally, a median-prices home in San Francisco costs almost 10 times the area’s median-yearly income of $112,376.
The study found that for what it costs to buy a home in San Francisco, one could purchase 23.2 homes in Detroit, Michigan. LendingTree states that Detroit has an average home price of $51,600.
Detroit had the largest difference to home prices in San Francisco at $1.14 million.
The second-farthest from San Francisco was Memphis, Tennessee, and its average home price of $103,700. One could purchase 11.2 homes in Memphis for the same price of one home in San Francisco.
Detroit had the lowest average income at $31,283, and homeowners in Memphis made an average of $37,199.
WalleyHub said Crofton, Maryland, had the lowest share of the population living in poverty at 1.7%—28.5 times lower than the highest poverty rate of 48.40% in Statesboro, Georgia.