Forbes Ranks America’s Best Bargain Cities
May 14, 2009
Written by Zack O’Malley Greenburg at Forbes.com
Behind the Numbers
To determine which U.S. cities are the best bargains, Forbes looked at the country’s 50 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas and metropolitan divisions–geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget used by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics.
We assigned points to metro regions across four data sets: Average salary for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher, from PayScale.com; annual unemployment statistics, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; cost of living, from Moody’s Economy.com; and the Housing Opportunity Index, from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo, which measures the amount of homes sold in a given area that would be affordable to a family earning the local median income based on standard mortgage underwriting criteria.
Lone Star Constellation
While the capital of Texas graced the top of our list, the rest of the state’s large cities performed admirably too. All five of Texas’ biggest burgs–Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Ft. Worth–were among the top 10 best bargains. Not a single city in Texas ended up on our list of most overpriced places.
Part of the reason is that Texas offers some of the best incentives for entrepreneurs looking to start or move a business, according to Eduardo Martinez, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. Like Phoenix, Texan metros “have picked up a lot of California companies that have left because of high operating costs,” he says.
15. Detroit, Mich.
14. Kansas City, Mo.
11. Cambridge, Mass. (tie)
11. Denver, Colo. (tie)
11. Nashville, Tenn. (tie)
10. San Antonio, Texas
9. Houston, Texas
8. Dallas, Texas
7. Columbus, Ohio
5. Indianapolis, Ind. (tie)
5. Cincinnati, Ohio (tie)
4. Fort Worth, Texas
3. Washington, D.C.
2. Phoenix, Ariz.
1. Austin, Texas
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