City information? (Greenville: school, living, cost of living)

[Ceezer]

Just out of curiosity, what source do you use/trust for your information on a city? Does everyone use just this site? Another? A combination?

I'm just asking because I have an old city comparison from information comprised of Sperlings and some census data, but it contradicts other sites. For instance, since this is the Greenville board, let's look at Greenville:

Population
Sperlings lists 55,777
**** lists 56,000
City-data lists 56,002

Avg cost of house
Sperlings lists $152,600
FYS lists $218,000
C-D lists $137,300

Cost of living
Sperlings lists 13.8% lower than avg
FYS lists 9% lower than avg
I don't see it on C-D

These examples aren't as extreme as some cities (for example, Sperlings lists Kingsport as having a cost of living almost 23% lower than the national average but FYS says 10%), but there are differences across the board. So who do you trust? City-data.com seems to be more in depth on the surface, but Sperlings is the one used by most financial institutions/organizations.

It's not exactly a matter of life and death, but it's certainly something that's had me questioning the facts.

[sfill]

I am thinking of relocating to greenville...
I called the chamber of commerce and asked for a relocation package... I did have to pay a small fee, but they sent me about 4-5 inches thick of information on the city. It has everything from stats to housing booklets, to relocation books, maps, school info, everything! I was a little unhappy I had to pay them for this information at first (since most other towns chamber of commerce do not charge for relocation packages) - but the ammount of info they send you is second to none! And I found it to be on the money with the stats, and everything else.
Hope this helps...

[sfill]

another thing...
when you see stats on the internet, try to see what YEAR they are pulling the info from. Like for instance, the last census was in 2000, so I noticed alot of the stats were from the year 2000. That is kind of outdated obviously. Some say they estimated the stats for the year 2005. So, check that out when looking at housing and demographic stats...