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.

Data dictionary & download

Download housing data (CSV) ↓

The CSV contains 1,211 Census places from the same 2020-2024 ACS 5-Year snapshot as the city guides. Each estimate column ends in E; its paired 90% margin-of-error column ends in M. Empty cells mean missing or suppressed, never zero. Dollar estimates use 2024 dollars.

state_fips and place_fips are text identifiers; preserve their leading zeros when importing into a spreadsheet. acs_period, dollar_year and confidence_level identify the source period, dollar basis and MOE confidence. city_url and census_rent_source link each row to its guide and Census geography.

The download contains reported estimates. Rent targets and ownership percentages are calculated on the site using the formulas below. Census source data is subject to the Census API terms. Cite the Census source, ACS period, city and page URL when reusing figures.

Published intervals and missing values

Some medians are published as open-ended intervals. In the 2024 data, the raw codes 3501, 250001 and 2000001 can represent $3,500+ gross rent, $250,000+ household income and $2,000,000+ home value. They are not exact dollar amounts. Lower-end interval codes are shown as “Under” the boundary.

We use Census estimate annotations when available. For this older snapshot, which did not retain annotations, we identify the documented 2024 interval codes only when the paired numeric MOE is absent. We do not reuse these limits for other years. Open-ended and missing medians are excluded from exact targets, ratios, differences, ranks and dataset medians; the displayed measure remains available with its interval label. Consequently, each summary may use fewer places than the directory contains.

The CSV preserves the numeric E/M columns from the stored snapshot; missing or suppressed values remain empty. Future imports normalize a controlled MOE to zero and keep its original special code in the database. Added E_status columns distinguish reported, lower_bound, upper_bound and missing; E_display carries the readable value. EA/MA columns preserve original annotations when collected; empty annotation cells in this legacy snapshot mean annotations were not retained, not that precision was confirmed.

Future data imports retain annotations and raw special codes. Missing, suppressed and not-applicable data stay unavailable. Census-controlled estimates with the special MOE code -555555555 may use zero MOE, with the original code retained. Existing missing MOEs are not retroactively guessed to be zero.

References: 2024 ACS Subject Definitions, Median and Appendix A and Census estimate and annotation notes.

Coverage and data quality

1,211 places are included; 21 have at least one open-ended median. Missing MOE counts include open-ended medians and are not additional missing estimates. No city is removed from the directory because of these flags.

Download the data-quality summary (JSON). City guides flag missing estimates, open-ended medians and MOEs above 20% of the corresponding estimate. Precision labels use the largest MOE-to-estimate ratio among rent, income and home value: up to 5%, up to 10%, up to 20%, and above 20%. Missing inputs prevent a complete precision assessment. These thresholds are our reading aids, not official Census quality grades.

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

Equal estimates share the same rank (for example, 1, 1, 3). Ranks and summary medians use only available, non-open-ended point estimates; nearby ranks may not represent a meaningful difference once sampling uncertainty is considered. Unweighted medians of the included city estimates are not estimates for all residents of a state.

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.

How we qualify a comparison

Margins of error use the Census ACS 90% confidence level. Our conservative screen compares the absolute difference with the sum of the two reported MOEs. A gap above that sum passes this screen; a gap equal to or below it remains inconclusive under this rule. This is not the Census statistical significance test, and overlapping margins do not prove that the underlying estimates are equal.

If either MOE is missing or suppressed, we show uncertainty unavailable and make no claim of a confirmed difference. Derived rent-target MOEs use the same × 12 ÷ 0.30 transformation and $100 rounding as the target. Ownership shares and value-to-income ratios are descriptive comparisons; no statistical significance is asserted for them.

For formal inference, use the Census Bureau statistical testing tool with the appropriate estimates and MOEs.

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.