Four midsized U.S. cities ranked among the top 10 in a study of the world’s most affordable places to live. Salt Lake City landed at the top of the list, followed by Austin (3), Dallas (6) and Atlanta (7). In the past several years, rents have skyrocketed in big cities globally, propelled by inflation and elevated mortgage rates that have sidelined would-be buyers. In the U.S. Northwest, meanwhile, tech workers at Amazon are among those fueling a real-estate frenzy in Central Washington’s Cascade Mountains.
You'll need to earn more than $200,000 to live comfortably in some of the largest U.S. cities, a new analysis by GoBankingRates reveals. That's more than twice the U.S. median household income of $83,730.
The analysis examined the 50 most populous U.S. cities using Sperling's BestPlaces cost-of-living index, which measures how average local prices for housing, groceries, transportation and other essentials differ from the national average.
It then adjusted Bureau of Labor Statistics spending data to reflect those local cost differences and combined the results with home values from Zillow, applying a 6.35% mortgage rate to estimate typical monthly payments for homeowners. (Housing costs for renters were not included in the study.)