Top 75 Cost of Living Cities

[somewhereoutthere15]

Originally Posted by jjbradleynyc

What's really striking about Nashville is how its downtown skyline is changing rapidly, every single year. By the year 2025, it will have almost double the amount of downtown skyscrapers that it has now, if everything gets built. Pretty remarkable growth for any city.

I was thinking about this the other day. If you look at the largest buildings in Nashville on Wikipedia, the number of buildings over 300 feet will nearly double to around 39 in the next 4 years, compared to 14 for Louisville, granted they do not construct any buildings over 300 feet between now and then.

Some of these will be residential or feature some residential units, but the majority will be office space and hotels, potentially creating tens of thousands of jobs. Metro needs to look into incentivizing developers to begin creating thousands of affordable units on the vast amount of empty land we still have in Davidson County in addition to the urban infill already taking place.

[xz2y]

Originally Posted by RotseCherut

Sad to see my hometown of Portland on the top of this list, but that was one thing that drove me away from Oregon, among other things. Other towns like Eugene, Bend, Medford, etc don't have much for an economy. I would have never been able to find a nice $1200/mo apartment 20 min from downtown anywhere in Portland or Seattle. However, I think the list may be a little bit off, because even though it calculates the cost of food,rent, gas, etc, it does not seem to take into account the state and local income taxes, including car registration fees, which can make an even more significant impact than many other factors. For example, in Oregon, there is a 11% income tax now on top earners and most middle class people will pay around 9% state taxes which is almost as much as California. And, of course, California I think may be hitting like the 13% or so level now. If you take the tax factor into the equation, then cities like Portland are even more expensive. Seattle's lack of a state income tax, for example, drove hordes of companies, IT and software people from the Silicon Valley who were eager to live in a nice place , but take home more of their paycheck.

I was considering moving back to Charlotte, but actually, after comparing the costs of Nashville and Charlotte and if you include the higher NC state taxes, car fees, etc , Charlotte seemed to be more expensive to me than Nashville. Also, Charlotte has a huge contrast of wealthy and poor neighborhoods. IF you are paying $1200/mo for an apartment in Charlotte you may end up in a much more crime-ridden neighborhood than you would in Nashville, even though you may get a bigger house. The housing in Charlotte's prestigious neighborhoods are almost as expensive as what I was seeing in Seattle (plus state taxes).


After looking for a place to live in Tampa, I will say Tampa is more expensive to live than Nashville and the prices are rising very fast. The Tampa Bay area is huge and I could not find any decent place for $1300/mo in that city to save my life, so whoever came up with the rent in that article is way off. By the time, I tried to make an appointment for any half way decent apartment, duplex or house in an ad for St. Petersburg or Tampa, it was already rented. The housing market there is on fire and cutthroat. What they don't assess is that the lower cost areas (including suburbs) of Tampa Bay are just not places where you want to live, whereas Nashville has some more affordable suburbs out of the city that are desirable to live.


Rent, Utilities, Internet, Gas and Food are simply not enough factors to completely assess a city's living cost. State and Local Taxes are very important missing category.

Excellent post!