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Rio Rancho is quite a pleasant community, offering many jobs, so not entirely a suburb. It has a lot of entertainment for a suburb its size. With growth in size, population and culture, it is becoming an extremely nice place to live. Practically connected to the Albuquerque west side is also a plus. just watch it rank higher next year!
Did you see the average listing price of homes on the top ten list? :O
City Avg. listing price (June 2010)
1. Eden Prairie, MN $430,710
2. Columbia-Ellicott City, MD $487,602
3. Newton, MA $989,445
4. Bellevue, WA $801,423
5. McKinney, TX $267,661
6. Fort Collins, CO $271,950
7. Overland Park, KS $308,235
8. Fishers, IN $282,482
9. Ames, IA $189,657
10. Rogers, AR $269,229
They didn't show the above data for RR, but the median home price was lower in RR for every city except Rogers, AR.
No, what I showed was the averaged listing price, but I referred to the average MEDIAN price, which is in the article. Of the median prices, only Rogers was lower than RR.
People will sometimes never have something nice to say about Rio Rancho.. but if they are so unhappy in a place, why are they still there? If I was so unhappy with Albuquerque I would have taken off! People are so miserable.
I love these studies even though I don't put much into them. If nothing else, it gives us bragging rights for a short time. If nothing else it shows people some of the areas and cities they have turned their noses down at really have something to offer and you don't have to have 5 million people to be a good place to live and work.
Here where we live (Rogers which is a few minutes from us) can in10th in the same study and everyone is excited..
These lists are more about creating buzz and publicity for the magazine itself, I believe.
I wondered why last year's #1 "Best Place to Live", Louisville, CO, didn't appear on this year's list. That's because last year was "best small towns" (under 50,000 pop.) and this year it's "best small cities" (50,000-250,000 pop.). So there are only three cities in New Mexico that fall into that size range: Rio Rancho, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces.
I don't know if there is another city on the list like Rio Rancho, which has a "city center" (or "downtown") that is completely isolated from the rest of the city, with nothing around it but vacant land. I guess it's a NIMBY phenomenon, nobody wanted them to build the downtown in their backyard.
I have no doubt that RR is a nice place, but after checking out the top 10 cities on the list, I have my doubts about the entire list.
Yeah, I agree.
It was fun to be able to rib the RR haters, but to be valid, a survey has to have some
empirical fact that is both meaningful and clearly compared. This survey is weak on both.
Back in 2005, both Time and Newsweek came out with almost simultaneous articles on
the booming real estate market identifying the "highest demand" (not highest priced)
zip codes in the US based on rapidity of sales. Each list was nearly identical and we
were fortunate to be within a week or so of selling our house when that came out.
Oh, yes, our zip code was number one in BOTH surveys and the house sold in about
27 hours of going into the MLS system and at a significant premium above asking price.
Some surveys are valid..
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