Houston's Cost of Living Is Sixth Lowest In Nation

Houston, the fourth largest city in the nation, is often lauded for its low cost of living, and a recent study backed up that reputation, though it also showed that the gap has narrowed.

The Council for Community and Economic Research has released a cost of living report comparing major cities, and Houston comes in as the sixth cheapest metro area in the nation.

That's a good place to be if you are looking for more bang for your buck, but Houston used to be even cheaper, and a local analyst says it will return to being so as soon as housing prices flatten.

“The thing is, we’re seeing housing values flatten now with the soft economy,” Peter Jankowski, a regional economist with the Greater Houston Partnership, the body that collected the Houston data used for the study, told KUHF. “And as housing values flatten, I expect to see this gap widen and Houston to return to being even more affordable than it is now.”

Source: Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER), Cost of Living Index, 2016 Annual Average
*Metro areas represented by most dominant urban area. Riverside, California is among the 20 most populous MSAs, but did not submit COLI data

Houston's after-taxes living costs come in 1.2 percent below average for the 264 urban areas in the report, directly behind Dallas, and directly above Atlanta. For comparison, New York and San Francisco finished 128.2 and 77.4 percent above the national average, respectively.

— Image courtesy Flickr/Ron Kikuchi