San Antonio and Austin Lead Forbes List For America’s Best-Value Cities
October 11, 2008
If your looking to get the best value for your dollar, Forbes.com recommends heading to Texas.
That’s because Austin and San Antonio lead the list of places where your money goes farthest. Residents of both enjoy affordable housing and promising prospects for job growth in coming years. Houston and Dallas also land in the top 10, at Nos. 4 and 7, respectively.
“Texas, as a whole, is one of the few economies that’s performing extremely well because of the energy and technology sectors,” says Andrew Gledhill, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com. Plus, he added, military bases in San Antonio have continued to draw a steady steam of personnel and federal employees to the city, spurring widespread job growth.
America’s Best-Value Cities
10. Portland, Ore.
9. Denver, Colo.
8. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn.
7. Dallas, Texas
6. Columbus, Ohio
5. Charlotte, N.C.
4. Houston, Texas
3. Indianapolis, Ind.
2. San Antonio, Texas
Job Growth Projections Rank: 4
Inflation Rank: 17
Median House Price/Median Household Income Rank: 7
Median Income/Cost of Living Index Rank: 12
Gas Prices Rank: 4
1. Austin, Texas
Behind the Numbers
To ensure that our list reflected future value instead of past bargains, we began by looking at projected job growth through 2012 in the 40 largest U.S.-Census-defined metropolitan areas of the country with data from Moody’s Economy.com.
Texan cities were a clear winner, with economists predicting job growth of at least 2% by 2012 in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. By comparison, job growth in cities at the bottom of our list, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Cleveland, is expected to be about 0.2%.
We then calculated the ratios between each city’s median house price and median household income, using 2000 U.S. Census figures, the latest available, and 2007 data from the National Association of Realtors. Next, we compared median income to Moody’s cost of living index.
Final factors included the average gas price in each city on a given day in October as collected by AAA, and year-over-year inflation growth as calculated by Moody’s and Forbes.com.
Read the entire article written by Abha Bhattarai at Forbes.com
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