Data methodology
How the housing affordability benchmarks work
MoveCostCompare uses one documented formula set across every city so readers can compare places without mixing incompatible sources.
Primary source and coverage
The current release uses U.S. Census Bureau 2020-2024 ACS 5-Year American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. The database includes 1,211 places with at least 20,000 residents across 10 states.
ACS 5-Year data combines survey responses collected over five years. It offers reliable geographic coverage but does not represent today's asking rent or a real-time home listing price.
Reported measures
- Median gross rent
- The ACS median contract rent plus estimated tenant-paid utilities for renter-occupied units paying cash rent.
- Median home value
- The ACS median respondent-estimated value for owner-occupied housing units.
- Median household income
- The ACS median household income in the past 12 months, reported in inflation-adjusted dollars for the dataset year.
- Owner occupancy
- Owner-occupied housing units divided by all occupied housing units.
Derived benchmarks
- Rent-to-income benchmark
- Median gross rent × 12 ÷ median household income. This compares two citywide medians and is not the Census renter cost-burden measure.
- Income for a 30% rent target
- Median gross rent × 12 ÷ 0.30, rounded to the nearest $100. The 30% threshold is a common planning convention, not a landlord rule or financial recommendation.
- Home value-to-income
- Median home value ÷ median household income.
- Price-to-rent baseline
- Median home value ÷ annual median gross rent. It excludes mortgage rates, taxes, insurance, maintenance and transaction costs.
Rankings and comparison scope
City pages compare each value with the median among the full current dataset. State rankings include only covered cities in that state. These results are never labeled as nationwide rankings because the current database covers 10 states rather than all U.S. states and territories.
City comparison pages subtract the same ACS measure for one city from the other and report the absolute gap. Lower rent, income target or home value-to-income figures describe a lower housing baseline, not an overall winner. Higher household income or ownership share is reported as context rather than a quality score.
Update and quality controls
The data pipeline checks place-level availability for every required ACS field, records when the official source was checked, rejects mixed-year builds and stages database and site changes before publication. It also rejects implausible values, invalid ownership totals, excessive missing estimates or margins of error, and a city-count drop greater than 10% from the previous release.
Margins of error use the Census ACS 90% confidence level. On comparison pages, a reported gap is treated as inconclusive when it does not exceed the two cities' combined margins of error. This conservative rule avoids presenting sampling noise as a confirmed difference.
Known limitations
- The site currently focuses on housing and income, not groceries, transportation, healthcare, taxes or a complete cost-of-living index.
- Citywide medians do not describe every household, neighborhood or housing type.
- Margins of error describe sampling uncertainty but do not capture every source of survey or reporting error.
- Current market prices may move faster than the official survey baseline.