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Maybe easy but not cheap (at least in comparison to other moves, probably cheap vs COL though). Uhauls, Pods and similar are way more expensive for one way trips away VCOL places than towards those places.
Cost me about $5k to move from my VVHCOL apt.
$2.5k lease break, they kept $600 out of my $1k deposit even tho I left the apt nice. Had to stop working for like 3 days just to have time to pack up and go (loss of $1.2k income). $500 for a uhaul, $100 for boxes and moving stuff.
And also there was the $700 deposit on my new place. And maybe like $600 worth of overlap in rent from the new place.
It was worth it tho cuz now im getting the same salary at a different workplace and I’m in a MCOL city and I should actually be able to buy a house here next year regardless of the high interest rates
I agree that 3 V's is excessive. For only 3 counties, I would have just grouped them together with the VVHCOL tier (and said it's >45% above the average) or labeled them "RIP".
OP... bless you for doing this work. One of my growing pet peeves about Reddit discussions on personal finance is how posters categorize their local area's COL, especially without specifying the actual location. I appreciate your composition of data to attempt to standardize this across the country!
Someone in my neighborhood Facebook group characterized our area as HCOL a few days ago.
Average home price here is $210,000. Median income is $48,000.
I see that a lot in my area. I moved two years ago from an orange county to a yellow county (according to this map) and chuckle a bit every time someone talks about how high the cost of living has become and how we're now in a "very expensive" area. And to be fair to them, everything has gotten more expensive since 2020, but we're still a lot cheaper than most major metro areas.
It's interesting. I consider my area to be average COL, and [bestplaces.net](http://bestplaces.net) has it within 10% of the average, but this chart shows it as HCOL. I'm guessing that's simply due to the housing price increases in the recent past or it was in the "barely HCOL" close to +10%.
I think people relate it to income (both average income for their area *and* their own income).
I have been doing similar research for a work project, but based on statewide data. Average CoL for a single adult in my state is $35,800, which sounds low but has to be related to the average entry level ($25,300) and median ($39,900) of *ALL* wages in the state.
While the CoL is, objectively, low, so is the income opportunity. Our *90th percentile* is only $80,000 and change.
I used to work for a national corporation who had an assign COL for each area and did pay bands based on where you lived. It was A-F with A being the highest and F being the lowest.
That company had Albany, NY as a C. This chart has it as a MCOL.
> pet peeves
Ooh, yes.
I've noticed across Reddit, more often than not, people do not share their assumptions. Or.
* They assume everyone is using the same definitions.
* The context, or rationale, that shapes that definition is the same across all participating redditors.
And that's how you end up with all that unproductive argy-bargy about if something is or is not "middle class."
Yup, if you present them with this map they will just say “all the people live in cities” and “there’s no jobs in the blue/yellow areas” …. Where 75% of the people live. Some will just come right out with it and say they refuse to move anywhere that’s not left of left. A victim of their own existence
Yeah, the whole Philly metro area seems off here. It’s certainly more affordable than NYC and DC, but it’s still measurably more expensive than the Midwest.
It also appears that property taxes (and taxes in general) aren’t included in their calculations. This would explain why NJ appears more reasonable on this map. The property taxes alone make owning a home in NJ a ridiculous prospect.
Philly’s suburb counties can vary wildly within the same county, take montco and Abington, that’s higher cost but go further out into Montco and it’s pretty cheap
Also Philly’s shitty areas and good areas and residential areas all average out to mcol I guess, not for long though with the redevelopment of north and west
Its because the northeast operates as such:
Old industrial powerhouse towns that have turned to shit surrounded by hyper expensive suburbs:
Think: Newark, Trenton, Camden, Lynn, New Haven, etc. then when you blend in those expensive towns with the dumps it makes it look average.
But go to r/NewHaven or r/CT for example and you’ll see that rents of skyrocketed in New Haven and CT pretty broadly, and there is no housing inventory available.
This definitely happens. All of Chicago is "MCOL" but within Chicago there are 3BR houses for sale for $25k and at $2.5m, depending on the neighborhood. But there's no real way to account for that in a map like this.
I was going to comment on this. Used to live in Evanston- if the Chicago metro was broken down by zip code it would tell a different story.
Currently live in a southern MCOL per the map, but in my town a family of 4 qualifies for a Habitat for Humanity home at 100k income. All the teachers, etc. have huge commutes
Yeah, it doesn’t add up. Yellow indicates a cost of living of $43k-$53k. A single person making under $72k qualifies for affordable housing in Central Jersey.
Yeah I can't quite tell from this map the where the lines for MCOL our but our property taxes are so outrageous compared to almost everywhere else that it makes it hard for me to believe that so much of the state is considered MCOL.
This clearly varries between towns in each county. My county is shown as Hcol but my town certainly is not. I think a few other towns in the county are seriously skewing the average.
Agreed. But even parts of a city can have wide disparity. E.g. North side of Chicago vs south side. This map still provides and interesting and useful overview though, and from the county level anyone could drill down to the city/town or neighborhood level.
Was about to say that… idk if I would call palm beach county, broward county, and Miami dade MCOL.
Maybe pockets of them but certainly not medium overall.
I think Campbell County SD is wrong, I just looked it up and it has a lower COL than the SD average, which is lower than the US average. Though only about 1500 people live there so maybe that is skewing the results for "average"
The studio apartment cost basis for housing really does skew this data.
I’ve lived all over the Midwest. I’d bet a pretty penny the *majority* of blue on this map don’t even have studios available for data. Meaning it’s probably based on the price of a 1- or even 2-bedroom apartment (I picked a county in Nebraska at random, the “fair market rent” for all 3 options was the same). So to have an objective comparison you’d have to use the 1- or 2-bedroom price for all counties.
Median home value would have net more accurate results, and also would have taken property taxes and insurance into account.
The general overview here is great, though - you can’t expect OP to consider every possible variable.
Totally agree, I made that same point somewhere above. There was a lot of discussion about Campbell County, SD which literally doesn’t have studios (or really apartments at all). I grew up in another county that didn’t have any apartments. In my town, a house has never been sold for more than $99,000. It makes the barrier to home entry incredibly low and one of the reasons apartments aren’t needed.
I agree the overall view is great! It’s not OPs fault the HUD data that the EPI used isn’t ideal. The bad part is that housing being so off really messes up a lot of counties colors.
This map is accurate using the data provided from EPI - you can check particular counties using the link in the description if you like.
Rent gets cheaper surprisingly quick in Florida once you get more inland. This also assumes a fair market studio rental, so Florida's crazy home insurance costs are not relevant here
Yeah I think it's just that there's certain hidden costs to living in South Florida that isn't represented well in the data. The county itself also covers a fair bit of land, so slightly cheaper housing costs inland in suburbs balance out super high costs in the main Metro area.
Florida still isn’t California expensive. It’s just that salaries are complete dogshit compared to the cost of living. Mississippi salaries with NorthEast CoL
Baltimore and Philly were the first things that jumped out at me, before I bothered to read the bullets, which call them out. I feel like there must be something at a finer level where each city has a map of neighborhoods that would look like this map of the US, at least when it comes to the housing costs.
I think you need to double check this against the gov locality pay charts. You have areas in blue that have their own locality pay specifically because they are not only higher than national average, but averages for the area.
You might need to tweak your model. In New York Kings county is likely more expensive than Queens, and is absolutely definitely more expensive than Duchess and Orange.
Cool map but I’m surprised by several areas that are likely a little skewed by your data. Miami / Chicago specifically seem to be off. Bizarre that lake county IL where I live is considered MCOL as well as Cook county which including Chicago . But somehow McHenry county is HCOL which is much cheaper and more rural.
I don't really understand how MCOL is not the average. Is it that the high-vvvhighCOL locations drag up the average, to where there are no VVVLCOL locations?
You summed it up pretty well - the distribution of cost of living per county is not even, the high cost areas pull up the average.
The lowest cost of living areas are all very close to each other (often 10s or 100s of dollars) while the highest cost areas differ by 1,000s of dollars.
That could be it, yeah.
Question for OP: is it possible to calculate and create a composition based around the median cost of living instead of the mean?
I tried but that was beyond my excel skills - for the MEDIAN function you need a COMPLETE list of values.
For example if county 1 has 2 million people and a COL of 50k, I'd have to list out 50k 2 million times - and then do that for 3,000 counties 😂
I could get a median by county - but this wouldn't factor in the amount of people living in each county either which wouldn't be fully accurate :/
Lots more people in the higher cost of living areas too. 1.5+ million in Manhattan alone, compared to a few thousand in the lowest cost of living counties.
Right. But that's *why* the cost of living is so high in those places, too many people competing for too few units. These aren't independent variables.
This data has pretty low granularity and wouldn't be able to capture the difference between astronomical prices near the coast and much lower prices inland.
There's a lot more density of shitty 1-2 bedroom housing in Dade than there are mansions and waterfront condos. Miami Gardens, Opa-Locka, Hialeah, Brownsville, North Miami, everything south of Kendall.
Broward is harder to believe, the corridor between 95 and the Turnpike is pretty shitty but the areas east and west are definitely HCOL
Yeah I'm in south florida and can confirm it's VHCOL. I have had several friends within the past 6 months move from Fort Lauderdale area to Myrtle Beach (a supposedly HCOL) and every one of them has remarked at how much less everything costs and how much money they're saving since the move.
It actually is!!! It’s affordable compared to some cities. It’s also just as good as them. I think it’s just the Midwest location and being away from the coast.
Very misleading if you consider the size and makeup of some of these counties.
Miami-Dade, which contains the famously unaffordable city of Miami, is one of Florida’s largest counties. Most of it is sparsely populated agricultural area and public land.
This map lists Miami-Dade as “medium affordability.” I suppose that’s true if you don’t mind living in the Everglades.
Yeah I do not believe the Seattle area part think it might be higher honestly all the puget Sound area is probably red. Considering most places cost 2k a month to rent from Seattle to Bellingham.
I'm puzzled as to why Westchester county is rated as that affordable. I think a couple towns are skewing the data, but even so that doesn't seem accurate at all.
Montana might be cheap for items but houses in the major cities (Bozeman, Billings, and Missoula) are pushing 1M+ and the wages have not kept up. Remote workers and Boomers have done a number on real estate.
I’m surprised the map is showing Montana so blue. I considered a number of spots in Montana as places to work and I couldn’t afford most of them, even making $80k. The few I could were polluted mining towns, like, Libby (maybe?) was polluted due to the asbestos mine, so ya that was a no go for me.
I live in one of the yellow counties in missouri.
I'm sure this means the COL is only high for people moving there from the higher cost of living areas, because people most definitely still struggle here.
These maps can be deceiving. A county can have 20 cities, and they can vary greatly. I live in MCOL County, but the city is VHCOL. A small 2k foot home is $1 million dollars with 2% property taxes. Don't get me wrong schools are amazing but not a low cost place to live. There are red pockets all over the U.S.
I think especially with VA having no cities in the counties this throws off things.
I think the data also might be skewed - Falls Church is one of the richest communities in the nation, and it’s got the same COL as Stafford and Fredericksburg, which is not remotely true.
I’m guessing that may be due to the city/county designation in VA.
Yeah, VA resident here and thought the same thing. Fairfax and Loudon county areas are ridiculously expensive and consistently rank near the top nationally
Yeah, it's called "latent consequences of generations of racial segregation"
Many of these cities have very stratified neighborhoods with home prices at large extremes
The cost of living by itself doesn't mean much unless it's compared to what jobs are paying in that area. If housing costs 5,000% more in one county than the average, but jobs pay 6,000% of average, it's actually a low-cost of living county.
Medina county, Ohio and Sacramento county California both being considering mcol is fucking hilarious. Medina is substantially cheaper. I just moved from summit county (adjacent to Medina) to sac County and my cost of living tripled.
Thanks for putting this together!
As a resident of Santa Cruz, I can attest to the area needing just about as many V's prefixed to the HCOL as are available.
I'm a little surprised to see the City and County of San Francisco an entire 2 V's below. The cost of living there is quite high, I would expect it to be very close to Santa Cruz. Has anybody given this data a smell test for SF, who could explain this apparent gap? Thanks
This is probably the most accurate representation of real COL in the SF Bay Area.
California’s COL is pretty sneakily unique in that COL goes down exponentially based on if/when you bought your house.
San Mateo/Santa Cruz counties are all SFH communities and includes some of the richest cities in the world (Atherton, Santa Cruz, Woodside…) - This is where the mansions (and the Flintstone house) are located. There is also next to zero transit outside regional rail.
Santa Clara county is the largest population center - 2m+ people, but also has the tech companies (Cupertino, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc..) - San Jose and Santa Clara’s rental stock keeps it from getting too pink (there is basically zero in the VVVHCOL counties.) - There is also a bus system and light rail that helps.
Finally, San Francisco is only 7sqmi and contains one of the densest blocks of city on EARTH in the Tenderloin (something like ~12k people per sqmi) - With rent control, one of the most complete transit systems in the US, and the largest rental stock, it makes sense.
This map (for the Bay Area, at least) would be pretty darn accurate for someone trying to get an idea of true COL.
There’s a reason why Spingfield has the lowest COL in New England. No one wants to live there. Not sure that deserves a shoutout
Anyway my VVHCOL life sucks too so maybe I should move there
I moved from a VHCOL to a VVHCOL and it seems cheaper here. Doing this by county May skew it because I lived in the most expensive part of the VHCOL and now live in almost the least expensive part of the VVHCOL.
Idk who’s surviving in Cass County ND on 40k a year, but it ain’t many people. Shit’s expensive here. I used to make just under $30k over a decade ago and was barely keeping my head above water.
It’s because HUD determined you only need $629 for a studio apartment + utilities in Cass County. They estimate as a single person you need $36,962 annually.
Interesting, not sure I buy that Fort Collins and surrounding areas are MCOL... And lumped in with a bunch of random Midwest areas. I suppose there's a massive difference between -10% and 10% but still, this is a HCOL area.
It’s because rent based off FMR which is never actually accurate toward what people pay. FMR also includes all tenant utilities (besides internet).
In Fort Collins example, HUD had determined that if they provide a housing voucher of $1,210, that voucher would cover rent + utilities in 40% of studies.
So FMR isn’t good to use in a case like this because it accounts for lower than average apartment costs. That isn’t OPs fault, the data the study is based on.
Took a look at your profile man, you have a great redemption story. $100k is awesome, most people will never make that in their life and you got there. (Median salary for a full time worker is $59k)
Easier said than done but don't compare yourself to people on reddit. Reddit skews college educated dudes in tech, IT, finance, which are all high paying fields. Plus people lie on the internet. Real life is very different
Past is the past, you're in a good spot now and are in a good affordable place to grow with an awesome salary. Good luck 👊
How is Nantucket less than San Francisco on the whole?
https://www.rentcafe.com/cost-of-living-calculator/us/ca/san-francisco
https://www.rentcafe.com/cost-of-living-calculator/us/ma/nantucket/
I’d like to point out when looking at the big island of Hawaii that the west and northern sides should be color coated red and the east and southern parts could possibly be downgraded to yellow.
Something feels off about the, like your subsections are too broad? The jump from 33k to 43k feels monumental compared to the jump from 79k to 86k or whatever.
Its neat, and you can only use the data you have available, but I feel like it generally under represents actual cost of living and it might disproportionately lower rural areas more. For example, there’s maybe a couple dozen studio apartments in my town and they are all specifically for section-8 housing. I feel like rural areas skew far more towards SFH rentals so it doesn’t “feel” like it actually reflects housing costs.
I’m pretty surprised by this map to be honest.
Houses in my area are 40% higher than the median, and household income is only 7% higher than the median. Going out to get a burger at a local restaurant is an easy $18/plate, so by the time you add a soda, tax, and tip, it’s well over $50 for a “cheap” date night.
I just have questions about the methodology is all. I’ve always say that I live in a HCOL, but don’t dare to pretend it’s a VHCOL.
I think the difference is that, in most of the deep red/pink areas, wages that are $100k are handed out very frequently (I’ve got a brother in law in a VVVHCOL that works in construction management and is pushing $200k and my sister in law is a nurse and bringing down similar figures). Yeah, their house is 2.5x the national median, but their income is almost 5x the national median. I’m middle management, and my wife is an attorney, and we barely gross 2.5x the national median with housing being 40% higher.
The thing to remember is, there are a LOT of places where $100k for a family goes a LONG way, even if it doesn’t feel like it for much of the population. If you overlayed population, my guess is that 60%+ of people live in a MHCOL or higher (because of the use of the “average”). There’s a lot of land out there, and maybe that’s where we retire to 🤣
I have to question the validity of this map when it shows Putnam County NY as “VVHCOL”, with Westchester County NY and Fairfield County CT as “HCOL”, making Putnam County two tiers higher than Westchester and Fairfield County. Putnam County is where people move when they can’t afford Westchester County.
Ok, except you use studio apartment rents? Studio apartments are basically unheard of where I live except in subsidized student and low income housing. They are definitely not reflective of the housing market the average person has access to. In my experience that’s common in places with lots of land, people just don’t build them because the cost of increasing it to a one bedroom is negligible.
I don’t think this is accurate. Atlanta is not HCOL by any means. The county I live in right now is way more expensive than Atlanta but it’s listed as LCOL. Campbell County South Dakota isn’t MCOL. I also have doubts of the Tampa area being MCOL.
Edit: I used the calculator to check, and it’s pretty inaccurate. It says in Flathead County Montana a single person would spend $675 a month on housing. In reality, the average 1 bed starts at $1,500.
Cool map. I think removing VVVHCOL and adding VLCOL would be more informative for people looking to move. Right now there’s an insane amount of blue on the map.
For example, is Pittsburgh really in the same category as boondocks, WV?
Actually, yes. Pittsburgh housing is very affordable, and transport/healthcare/Food costs may be lower due to city transit and amenities.
I do agree with the sentiment - but those LCOL areas are all very close in cost compared to the high cost areas which vary by tens of thousands of dollars in some cases
Atherton, CA is only about ~15 miles from San Francisco and it’s [median home price](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Atherton_CA/overview) is about $10.5 million. The entire peninsula is like this.
[San Francisco’s median](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/San-Francisco_CA/overview) is $1.2 million - 1/10th of Atherton.
There really is no way to show this insane divergence without having a stratospheric top end.
The only other place that comes close to this is Manhattan - Once again, the prices in these areas are *so much* higher than the region, there is really no other way to describe it.
It's a really big county it looks like - maybe counties aren't a good way to map this, or an overlay of cities + counties would be better. Looks like NYC has borough level detail.
Yea, if you look at my area (Chicago), city proper is MCOL, but two of the suburbs counties are HCOL. Not sure how this is calculated, because Lake County RE is much more expensive than McHenry county.
no way Houston is LCOL. It is much more affordable than other major cities, but it's in the same category as rural Mississippi.
Cool map in any case, just needs some refinements or clarifications, probably.
I think if you're going to stratify by 20%, you should keep it consistent across all tiers. Adding another "v" tier is misleading viewers into thinking cost of living in those areas are "very very very" high. Which we already know and two "verys" expresses that.
Alternatively, if that is the story you're trying to convey, then the bottom tiers need to be split by 15%. This is akin to not starting a chart at 0 to show more difference in each tiers than actual.
Thats a fair critique.
I wanted to be more granular at the higher levels to better highlight differences between urban areas.
I was planning to split the lowest tiers into 15% intervals as well - until I discovered no counties have a COL less than 30% of what the average person experiences.
MCOL is centered around the average ($48,721), but the distribution of COL isn't even and skews more towards the expensive side - hence why there are multiple tiers (with smaller numbers of people) above +30%, but none below -30%
I think anyone interpreting this map should decouple cost of living at a county level from cost of living at an urban area level.
For example Travis County TX is labeled MCOL, but Austin, which is contained within the county, I would not describe as a MCOL city.
Also, it’s wild to see Missoula and Ravalli Counties (MT) listed as LCOL when housing prices generally starts at $400,000 and goes up quickly if you actually want a livable space.
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Lol I’m in a VVVHCOL county. I didn’t know they assigned that many Vs
yep, gets confusing after the 2nd V...should've gone with "Super Duper Crazy High COL" instead
Should just say “Damn”
It’s like grading for diamonds.
Move?
that's "Mo**vvv**e" to him.
Probably can’t afford to /s
The ironic thing is that it is easy to move *out* of a HCOL area.
Maybe easy but not cheap (at least in comparison to other moves, probably cheap vs COL though). Uhauls, Pods and similar are way more expensive for one way trips away VCOL places than towards those places.
Cost me about $5k to move from my VVHCOL apt. $2.5k lease break, they kept $600 out of my $1k deposit even tho I left the apt nice. Had to stop working for like 3 days just to have time to pack up and go (loss of $1.2k income). $500 for a uhaul, $100 for boxes and moving stuff. And also there was the $700 deposit on my new place. And maybe like $600 worth of overlap in rent from the new place. It was worth it tho cuz now im getting the same salary at a different workplace and I’m in a MCOL city and I should actually be able to buy a house here next year regardless of the high interest rates
So it cost you so much because you broke your lease early... Otherwise, that seems like any other move, maybe even on the cheap end
Lol, if the price difference in a uhaul between different parts of the country is a dealbreaker, then yeah you ain't moving
Hey me too!! Lol.
My county only has 2 Vs. Somehow, I feel a sense of relief... LOL.
I agree I didn’t know VVVHCOL was a thing.
I agree that 3 V's is excessive. For only 3 counties, I would have just grouped them together with the VVHCOL tier (and said it's >45% above the average) or labeled them "RIP".
They could’ve just extended the LCOL and made a VLCOL bracket. Or a MHCOL and MLCOL brackets. The VVV is just silly.
OP... bless you for doing this work. One of my growing pet peeves about Reddit discussions on personal finance is how posters categorize their local area's COL, especially without specifying the actual location. I appreciate your composition of data to attempt to standardize this across the country!
Someone in my neighborhood Facebook group characterized our area as HCOL a few days ago. Average home price here is $210,000. Median income is $48,000.
I think people assume because costs have gone up they must be in HCOL. Meanwhile prices have also gone up everywhere else
I see that a lot in my area. I moved two years ago from an orange county to a yellow county (according to this map) and chuckle a bit every time someone talks about how high the cost of living has become and how we're now in a "very expensive" area. And to be fair to them, everything has gotten more expensive since 2020, but we're still a lot cheaper than most major metro areas.
It's interesting. I consider my area to be average COL, and [bestplaces.net](http://bestplaces.net) has it within 10% of the average, but this chart shows it as HCOL. I'm guessing that's simply due to the housing price increases in the recent past or it was in the "barely HCOL" close to +10%.
Weird, this chart shows MCOL for my area but the site you linked would have it in the HCOL lol.
I think people relate it to income (both average income for their area *and* their own income). I have been doing similar research for a work project, but based on statewide data. Average CoL for a single adult in my state is $35,800, which sounds low but has to be related to the average entry level ($25,300) and median ($39,900) of *ALL* wages in the state. While the CoL is, objectively, low, so is the income opportunity. Our *90th percentile* is only $80,000 and change.
I used to work for a national corporation who had an assign COL for each area and did pay bands based on where you lived. It was A-F with A being the highest and F being the lowest. That company had Albany, NY as a C. This chart has it as a MCOL.
> pet peeves Ooh, yes. I've noticed across Reddit, more often than not, people do not share their assumptions. Or. * They assume everyone is using the same definitions. * The context, or rationale, that shapes that definition is the same across all participating redditors. And that's how you end up with all that unproductive argy-bargy about if something is or is not "middle class."
Thank you and agreed! Definetly found it useful and interesting for myself, and hopefully for others as well
Just looking online you would think HCOL is 50% of the population. As usual just a loud minority!
Yeah happy people don't post about it 😂
Going off reddit I thought 75% of the population was HCOL or higher. Now I know 77% is LCOL to MCOL
Yup, if you present them with this map they will just say “all the people live in cities” and “there’s no jobs in the blue/yellow areas” …. Where 75% of the people live. Some will just come right out with it and say they refuse to move anywhere that’s not left of left. A victim of their own existence
Now we know where the “200k is the new 100k” and “200k is the new middle class” comes from
Also, ~75% of the population lives in a LCOL or MCOL location. The amount of people living in HCOL or higher is actually pretty small.
And greatly overrepresented on reddit
Quite honestly, Jersey surprises me. My parents live there and I've been pushing them to move south to Delaware with us for years and years.
Yeah, the whole Philly metro area seems off here. It’s certainly more affordable than NYC and DC, but it’s still measurably more expensive than the Midwest. It also appears that property taxes (and taxes in general) aren’t included in their calculations. This would explain why NJ appears more reasonable on this map. The property taxes alone make owning a home in NJ a ridiculous prospect.
It's based off a studio apartment and 1 single adult.
My guess is that the broad ranges are throwing people off. High LCOL and Low LCOL can be measurably different but colored the same on the map.
Yeah difference in high LCOL and Low CLOL is 43,200 and 33,600. That 9,000 is HUGE at that income.
Philly’s suburb counties can vary wildly within the same county, take montco and Abington, that’s higher cost but go further out into Montco and it’s pretty cheap Also Philly’s shitty areas and good areas and residential areas all average out to mcol I guess, not for long though with the redevelopment of north and west
Its because the northeast operates as such: Old industrial powerhouse towns that have turned to shit surrounded by hyper expensive suburbs: Think: Newark, Trenton, Camden, Lynn, New Haven, etc. then when you blend in those expensive towns with the dumps it makes it look average.
But go to r/NewHaven or r/CT for example and you’ll see that rents of skyrocketed in New Haven and CT pretty broadly, and there is no housing inventory available.
I’m struggling to believe philadelphia county in PA is LCOL but maybe some shitty neighborhoods skew it?
This definitely happens. All of Chicago is "MCOL" but within Chicago there are 3BR houses for sale for $25k and at $2.5m, depending on the neighborhood. But there's no real way to account for that in a map like this.
I was going to comment on this. Used to live in Evanston- if the Chicago metro was broken down by zip code it would tell a different story. Currently live in a southern MCOL per the map, but in my town a family of 4 qualifies for a Habitat for Humanity home at 100k income. All the teachers, etc. have huge commutes
Yeah, it doesn’t add up. Yellow indicates a cost of living of $43k-$53k. A single person making under $72k qualifies for affordable housing in Central Jersey.
It’s not accurate. Several more counties here are HCOL than what is represented, mostly because of rapidly rising housing costs.
Yeah I can't quite tell from this map the where the lines for MCOL our but our property taxes are so outrageous compared to almost everywhere else that it makes it hard for me to believe that so much of the state is considered MCOL.
This clearly varries between towns in each county. My county is shown as Hcol but my town certainly is not. I think a few other towns in the county are seriously skewing the average.
Agreed. But even parts of a city can have wide disparity. E.g. North side of Chicago vs south side. This map still provides and interesting and useful overview though, and from the county level anyone could drill down to the city/town or neighborhood level.
Yo this is excellent OP. Everything is laid out very nicely. I'm surprised Miami isn't higher.
Was about to say that… idk if I would call palm beach county, broward county, and Miami dade MCOL. Maybe pockets of them but certainly not medium overall.
I’m having a hard time believing that both Tampa, Florida and Campbell County, South Dakota are a MCOL.
I think Campbell County SD is wrong, I just looked it up and it has a lower COL than the SD average, which is lower than the US average. Though only about 1500 people live there so maybe that is skewing the results for "average"
It is inaccurate. They don’t have studio apartments (or apartments at all really), which is what this calculator goes off of.
The studio apartment cost basis for housing really does skew this data. I’ve lived all over the Midwest. I’d bet a pretty penny the *majority* of blue on this map don’t even have studios available for data. Meaning it’s probably based on the price of a 1- or even 2-bedroom apartment (I picked a county in Nebraska at random, the “fair market rent” for all 3 options was the same). So to have an objective comparison you’d have to use the 1- or 2-bedroom price for all counties. Median home value would have net more accurate results, and also would have taken property taxes and insurance into account. The general overview here is great, though - you can’t expect OP to consider every possible variable.
Totally agree, I made that same point somewhere above. There was a lot of discussion about Campbell County, SD which literally doesn’t have studios (or really apartments at all). I grew up in another county that didn’t have any apartments. In my town, a house has never been sold for more than $99,000. It makes the barrier to home entry incredibly low and one of the reasons apartments aren’t needed. I agree the overall view is great! It’s not OPs fault the HUD data that the EPI used isn’t ideal. The bad part is that housing being so off really messes up a lot of counties colors.
This map is inaccurate, South FL should be at least red.
Yeah that’s what I thought too. Palm Beach is a yellow but Riverside county CA is orange? Lol.
This map is accurate using the data provided from EPI - you can check particular counties using the link in the description if you like. Rent gets cheaper surprisingly quick in Florida once you get more inland. This also assumes a fair market studio rental, so Florida's crazy home insurance costs are not relevant here
Yeah I think it's just that there's certain hidden costs to living in South Florida that isn't represented well in the data. The county itself also covers a fair bit of land, so slightly cheaper housing costs inland in suburbs balance out super high costs in the main Metro area.
It says HCOL. Maybe other places are even higher cost of living than South Florida.
Florida still isn’t California expensive. It’s just that salaries are complete dogshit compared to the cost of living. Mississippi salaries with NorthEast CoL
This should be pinned on r/SameGrassButGreener
Only Chicago, Philadelphia, or Ohio are worth moving too according to there
That sub HATES Texas and flawda
TBH, god almighty also hates the Gulf Coast in general. Helllooo climate change.
Florida is amazing until you interact with the people there.
They also hate Denver.
Wish I could post images there 😂
The folks over in r/maps or r/mapporn would love it.
Queens higher than Brooklyn? Interesting
Brooklyn probably has a lot more cheap studios than Queens which is mostly multi-family
How is HI not at least VVHCOL? It’s right there with like SF and NYC..
And Alaska…is apparently a LCOL, which made me laugh out loud
Agreed, Anchorage is anything short of a LCOL area, definitely MCOL and arguably could be considered a HCOL
Baltimore and Philly were the first things that jumped out at me, before I bothered to read the bullets, which call them out. I feel like there must be something at a finer level where each city has a map of neighborhoods that would look like this map of the US, at least when it comes to the housing costs.
Great thread, OP. Enjoying the post, comments, and responses vvvmuch! 😁
Comments are always the most entertaining 😂
I think you need to double check this against the gov locality pay charts. You have areas in blue that have their own locality pay specifically because they are not only higher than national average, but averages for the area.
Like Lake Tahoe
You might need to tweak your model. In New York Kings county is likely more expensive than Queens, and is absolutely definitely more expensive than Duchess and Orange.
Also in FL Monroe is likely less, not more, $$$ than Miami, Broward, Palm.
I find it interesting that I'm in the Medium category. I always thought it was High!
People live in Cities
Christ. I guess a lot of people in my area are just leaving above their means, then.
How the hell is Forsyth Georgia in the Red?
That's my question too... I have heard that housing has gotten crazy expensive in Cumming but other than that idk
This might be the first useful map ive seen on reddit all year wow
I can move anywhere in the country and save Money, Awesome!
Cool map but I’m surprised by several areas that are likely a little skewed by your data. Miami / Chicago specifically seem to be off. Bizarre that lake county IL where I live is considered MCOL as well as Cook county which including Chicago . But somehow McHenry county is HCOL which is much cheaper and more rural.
Agreed, Chicago area seems off!
this needs a "quality of life" overlapping map.
I don't really understand how MCOL is not the average. Is it that the high-vvvhighCOL locations drag up the average, to where there are no VVVLCOL locations?
What do you mean? It says in the chart that nationwide the average COL is $48k which falls comfortably in the MCOL bracket.
You summed it up pretty well - the distribution of cost of living per county is not even, the high cost areas pull up the average. The lowest cost of living areas are all very close to each other (often 10s or 100s of dollars) while the highest cost areas differ by 1,000s of dollars.
That could be it, yeah. Question for OP: is it possible to calculate and create a composition based around the median cost of living instead of the mean?
I tried but that was beyond my excel skills - for the MEDIAN function you need a COMPLETE list of values. For example if county 1 has 2 million people and a COL of 50k, I'd have to list out 50k 2 million times - and then do that for 3,000 counties 😂 I could get a median by county - but this wouldn't factor in the amount of people living in each county either which wouldn't be fully accurate :/
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Wow, thank you for this!! For anyone curious, the median COL using this method is: $46,524. Thankfully not THAT different 😂
Lots more people in the higher cost of living areas too. 1.5+ million in Manhattan alone, compared to a few thousand in the lowest cost of living counties.
Right. But that's *why* the cost of living is so high in those places, too many people competing for too few units. These aren't independent variables.
I find it hard to believe south Florida is not VHCOL
This data has pretty low granularity and wouldn't be able to capture the difference between astronomical prices near the coast and much lower prices inland.
There's a lot more density of shitty 1-2 bedroom housing in Dade than there are mansions and waterfront condos. Miami Gardens, Opa-Locka, Hialeah, Brownsville, North Miami, everything south of Kendall. Broward is harder to believe, the corridor between 95 and the Turnpike is pretty shitty but the areas east and west are definitely HCOL
Yeah I'm in south florida and can confirm it's VHCOL. I have had several friends within the past 6 months move from Fort Lauderdale area to Myrtle Beach (a supposedly HCOL) and every one of them has remarked at how much less everything costs and how much money they're saving since the move.
I call shenanigans because they put Nantucket in the second highest bracket when in reality it’s probably the highest cost of living in the US.
Cool map! I'm mostly amazed by how *small* the difference is between VVVHCOL and LCOL.
Chicago cheap af. I knew it
It actually is!!! It’s affordable compared to some cities. It’s also just as good as them. I think it’s just the Midwest location and being away from the coast.
I am glad to own real estate in the Great Lakes region now. Our kids will inherit very valuable assets when we die.
Harris county (Houston) is listed as LCOL and all of the surrounding counties are MCOL? I don't know about that.
Harris County has many very poor neighborhoods that drag the average down, which isn't really the case as much for Fort Bend or Montgomery
Chicago doing our best to not be as bad as NYC, LA, SF. Aww yeah
Didnt even realize that there is a HCOL county in TX. And of course I'm in it.
Very misleading if you consider the size and makeup of some of these counties. Miami-Dade, which contains the famously unaffordable city of Miami, is one of Florida’s largest counties. Most of it is sparsely populated agricultural area and public land. This map lists Miami-Dade as “medium affordability.” I suppose that’s true if you don’t mind living in the Everglades.
Do a breakdown on cost to build. The data would conflict with some of the data above.
Yeah I do not believe the Seattle area part think it might be higher honestly all the puget Sound area is probably red. Considering most places cost 2k a month to rent from Seattle to Bellingham.
I'm puzzled as to why Westchester county is rated as that affordable. I think a couple towns are skewing the data, but even so that doesn't seem accurate at all.
Montana might be cheap for items but houses in the major cities (Bozeman, Billings, and Missoula) are pushing 1M+ and the wages have not kept up. Remote workers and Boomers have done a number on real estate.
I’m surprised the map is showing Montana so blue. I considered a number of spots in Montana as places to work and I couldn’t afford most of them, even making $80k. The few I could were polluted mining towns, like, Libby (maybe?) was polluted due to the asbestos mine, so ya that was a no go for me.
I live in one of the yellow counties in missouri. I'm sure this means the COL is only high for people moving there from the higher cost of living areas, because people most definitely still struggle here.
These maps can be deceiving. A county can have 20 cities, and they can vary greatly. I live in MCOL County, but the city is VHCOL. A small 2k foot home is $1 million dollars with 2% property taxes. Don't get me wrong schools are amazing but not a low cost place to live. There are red pockets all over the U.S.
Really, Alaska is MCOL? That’s very far from reality.
I don't know about this. We need a chart with income relative to cost of living. This is misleading
Dude I’ve been looking for a map like this to see what I am and now I see so thanks
NJ MCOL 🤣 This chart is as dumb as a popcorn sizing.
I think especially with VA having no cities in the counties this throws off things. I think the data also might be skewed - Falls Church is one of the richest communities in the nation, and it’s got the same COL as Stafford and Fredericksburg, which is not remotely true. I’m guessing that may be due to the city/county designation in VA.
That definitely has some effect - the 3 lowest cost of living areas are all VA city-counties. As to why exactly that is I'm not sure
Yeah, VA resident here and thought the same thing. Fairfax and Loudon county areas are ridiculously expensive and consistently rank near the top nationally
Something’s off with New Orleans
Yeah, it's called "latent consequences of generations of racial segregation" Many of these cities have very stratified neighborhoods with home prices at large extremes
Wow I’m only in a VHCOL county, surrounded by VV or VVVHCOL suckers! Woohoo!
Would like to see the VLCOL and VVLCOL counties as well
The cost of living by itself doesn't mean much unless it's compared to what jobs are paying in that area. If housing costs 5,000% more in one county than the average, but jobs pay 6,000% of average, it's actually a low-cost of living county.
Not surprised by my orange square in Washington. Feels like half of california is moving here and bringing their COL with them.
Medina county, Ohio and Sacramento county California both being considering mcol is fucking hilarious. Medina is substantially cheaper. I just moved from summit county (adjacent to Medina) to sac County and my cost of living tripled.
When we moved from VV to H, it felt like we got our new house for free
Mine is pink, feels about right🤑
Goated
Thanks for putting this together! As a resident of Santa Cruz, I can attest to the area needing just about as many V's prefixed to the HCOL as are available. I'm a little surprised to see the City and County of San Francisco an entire 2 V's below. The cost of living there is quite high, I would expect it to be very close to Santa Cruz. Has anybody given this data a smell test for SF, who could explain this apparent gap? Thanks
Oo, oo, do cost of dying next!
VVVV Happy I live in a LCOL area 👌🏻
Is this COL compared to wages? Or just general COL?
Almost certainly just COL.
Only two HCOL counties in my state and I'm in one of them. Lovely.
This is probably the most accurate representation of real COL in the SF Bay Area. California’s COL is pretty sneakily unique in that COL goes down exponentially based on if/when you bought your house. San Mateo/Santa Cruz counties are all SFH communities and includes some of the richest cities in the world (Atherton, Santa Cruz, Woodside…) - This is where the mansions (and the Flintstone house) are located. There is also next to zero transit outside regional rail. Santa Clara county is the largest population center - 2m+ people, but also has the tech companies (Cupertino, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc..) - San Jose and Santa Clara’s rental stock keeps it from getting too pink (there is basically zero in the VVVHCOL counties.) - There is also a bus system and light rail that helps. Finally, San Francisco is only 7sqmi and contains one of the densest blocks of city on EARTH in the Tenderloin (something like ~12k people per sqmi) - With rent control, one of the most complete transit systems in the US, and the largest rental stock, it makes sense. This map (for the Bay Area, at least) would be pretty darn accurate for someone trying to get an idea of true COL.
There’s a reason why Spingfield has the lowest COL in New England. No one wants to live there. Not sure that deserves a shoutout Anyway my VVHCOL life sucks too so maybe I should move there
How the hell is Jefferson County higher cost of living than Denver?
I moved from a VHCOL to a VVHCOL and it seems cheaper here. Doing this by county May skew it because I lived in the most expensive part of the VHCOL and now live in almost the least expensive part of the VVHCOL.
Idk who’s surviving in Cass County ND on 40k a year, but it ain’t many people. Shit’s expensive here. I used to make just under $30k over a decade ago and was barely keeping my head above water.
It’s because HUD determined you only need $629 for a studio apartment + utilities in Cass County. They estimate as a single person you need $36,962 annually.
Interesting, not sure I buy that Fort Collins and surrounding areas are MCOL... And lumped in with a bunch of random Midwest areas. I suppose there's a massive difference between -10% and 10% but still, this is a HCOL area.
It’s because rent based off FMR which is never actually accurate toward what people pay. FMR also includes all tenant utilities (besides internet). In Fort Collins example, HUD had determined that if they provide a housing voucher of $1,210, that voucher would cover rent + utilities in 40% of studies. So FMR isn’t good to use in a case like this because it accounts for lower than average apartment costs. That isn’t OPs fault, the data the study is based on.
I get where you’re coming from but I vote a re-do with median
Sounds like I need money to live in any of these states. Maybe more money since I have four disabilities
Clearly no one trying to buy a house in Vegas if you say it’s 10+/- average.
DuPage I get but the heck's going on in McHenry County, Illinois? Suburban housing cost meets conservative wage scale?
This makes me feel like a failure. I make 6 figures in a blue county. And I have very little to show for it.
Took a look at your profile man, you have a great redemption story. $100k is awesome, most people will never make that in their life and you got there. (Median salary for a full time worker is $59k) Easier said than done but don't compare yourself to people on reddit. Reddit skews college educated dudes in tech, IT, finance, which are all high paying fields. Plus people lie on the internet. Real life is very different Past is the past, you're in a good spot now and are in a good affordable place to grow with an awesome salary. Good luck 👊
Thanks bro.
I don’t know where they are getting data on Alaska but it’s way off.
How is Nantucket less than San Francisco on the whole? https://www.rentcafe.com/cost-of-living-calculator/us/ca/san-francisco https://www.rentcafe.com/cost-of-living-calculator/us/ma/nantucket/
I’m over here thinking I’m LCOL and my county bumped to MCOL. Good thing I bought at the LCOL.
I’d like to point out when looking at the big island of Hawaii that the west and northern sides should be color coated red and the east and southern parts could possibly be downgraded to yellow.
Something feels off about the, like your subsections are too broad? The jump from 33k to 43k feels monumental compared to the jump from 79k to 86k or whatever. Its neat, and you can only use the data you have available, but I feel like it generally under represents actual cost of living and it might disproportionately lower rural areas more. For example, there’s maybe a couple dozen studio apartments in my town and they are all specifically for section-8 housing. I feel like rural areas skew far more towards SFH rentals so it doesn’t “feel” like it actually reflects housing costs.
Chicago, Tampa? Sus
Most times i really don’t enjoy being in the Midwest. But when it comes to cost of living. I breath a sigh of relief
I’m pretty surprised by this map to be honest. Houses in my area are 40% higher than the median, and household income is only 7% higher than the median. Going out to get a burger at a local restaurant is an easy $18/plate, so by the time you add a soda, tax, and tip, it’s well over $50 for a “cheap” date night. I just have questions about the methodology is all. I’ve always say that I live in a HCOL, but don’t dare to pretend it’s a VHCOL. I think the difference is that, in most of the deep red/pink areas, wages that are $100k are handed out very frequently (I’ve got a brother in law in a VVVHCOL that works in construction management and is pushing $200k and my sister in law is a nurse and bringing down similar figures). Yeah, their house is 2.5x the national median, but their income is almost 5x the national median. I’m middle management, and my wife is an attorney, and we barely gross 2.5x the national median with housing being 40% higher. The thing to remember is, there are a LOT of places where $100k for a family goes a LONG way, even if it doesn’t feel like it for much of the population. If you overlayed population, my guess is that 60%+ of people live in a MHCOL or higher (because of the use of the “average”). There’s a lot of land out there, and maybe that’s where we retire to 🤣
How the hell is Teton County not VVH
💯, in addition to some of those other mountain resort counties like Pitkin in Colorado where Aspen is located
I have to question the validity of this map when it shows Putnam County NY as “VVHCOL”, with Westchester County NY and Fairfield County CT as “HCOL”, making Putnam County two tiers higher than Westchester and Fairfield County. Putnam County is where people move when they can’t afford Westchester County.
Ok, except you use studio apartment rents? Studio apartments are basically unheard of where I live except in subsidized student and low income housing. They are definitely not reflective of the housing market the average person has access to. In my experience that’s common in places with lots of land, people just don’t build them because the cost of increasing it to a one bedroom is negligible.
Saving this for next time I see the “Where are you finding houses for $500k or less!?” comments…
I don’t think this is accurate. Atlanta is not HCOL by any means. The county I live in right now is way more expensive than Atlanta but it’s listed as LCOL. Campbell County South Dakota isn’t MCOL. I also have doubts of the Tampa area being MCOL. Edit: I used the calculator to check, and it’s pretty inaccurate. It says in Flathead County Montana a single person would spend $675 a month on housing. In reality, the average 1 bed starts at $1,500.
Cool map. I think removing VVVHCOL and adding VLCOL would be more informative for people looking to move. Right now there’s an insane amount of blue on the map. For example, is Pittsburgh really in the same category as boondocks, WV?
Actually, yes. Pittsburgh housing is very affordable, and transport/healthcare/Food costs may be lower due to city transit and amenities. I do agree with the sentiment - but those LCOL areas are all very close in cost compared to the high cost areas which vary by tens of thousands of dollars in some cases
Atherton, CA is only about ~15 miles from San Francisco and it’s [median home price](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Atherton_CA/overview) is about $10.5 million. The entire peninsula is like this. [San Francisco’s median](https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/San-Francisco_CA/overview) is $1.2 million - 1/10th of Atherton. There really is no way to show this insane divergence without having a stratospheric top end. The only other place that comes close to this is Manhattan - Once again, the prices in these areas are *so much* higher than the region, there is really no other way to describe it.
Miami is MCOL?
It's a really big county it looks like - maybe counties aren't a good way to map this, or an overlay of cities + counties would be better. Looks like NYC has borough level detail.
Yea, if you look at my area (Chicago), city proper is MCOL, but two of the suburbs counties are HCOL. Not sure how this is calculated, because Lake County RE is much more expensive than McHenry county.
Each NYC borough is actually a county!
Overlay this with a jobs market map.
no way Houston is LCOL. It is much more affordable than other major cities, but it's in the same category as rural Mississippi. Cool map in any case, just needs some refinements or clarifications, probably.
Lol I love how SF/Oakland/Berkeley are “just” VHCOL, while Marin, San Jose, and the Peninsula are all more expensive than that. Checks out.
You didn’t want to make a VLCOL for two counties but thought it was okay to make a very ridiculously named VVVHCOL for two counties? 🤔
Hampden County MA being LCOL is fucking comical to me 😂😂😂😂 ain’t no way my home county is “affordable” or LCOL. Please.
it’s definitely more affordable than the rest of the state. houses in the Boston area are twice the cost of ones in my hometown (Ludlow).
I think if you're going to stratify by 20%, you should keep it consistent across all tiers. Adding another "v" tier is misleading viewers into thinking cost of living in those areas are "very very very" high. Which we already know and two "verys" expresses that. Alternatively, if that is the story you're trying to convey, then the bottom tiers need to be split by 15%. This is akin to not starting a chart at 0 to show more difference in each tiers than actual.
Thats a fair critique. I wanted to be more granular at the higher levels to better highlight differences between urban areas. I was planning to split the lowest tiers into 15% intervals as well - until I discovered no counties have a COL less than 30% of what the average person experiences.
Wouldn’t MCOL be the average, LCOL below the average and HCOL above? I’m not being rude, just curious as to what the reasoning is for the breakdown.
MCOL is centered around the average ($48,721), but the distribution of COL isn't even and skews more towards the expensive side - hence why there are multiple tiers (with smaller numbers of people) above +30%, but none below -30%
I think anyone interpreting this map should decouple cost of living at a county level from cost of living at an urban area level. For example Travis County TX is labeled MCOL, but Austin, which is contained within the county, I would not describe as a MCOL city.
Baltimore City. Based. Also, Multnomah county, Teton county and Travis county are all wrong. They are more expensive than indicated.
Also, it’s wild to see Missoula and Ravalli Counties (MT) listed as LCOL when housing prices generally starts at $400,000 and goes up quickly if you actually want a livable space.
Bend, Oregon is HCOL not MCOL. Very Interesting and detailed map by the way thank you!
Yeah this map is bullshit lol