The 10 Cheapest Places To Live In Washington For 2022

The 10 Cheapest Places To Live In Washington For 2022

Washington may be one of the most expensive states in America, but you wouldn’t know it in Ephrata, the most affordable city in the state. Ephrata is a great place to buy or rent, with both options costing less of your hard-earned income than most cities in Washington. The median income in Ephrata is $71,269 and the median home price is $169,000. At just a hair over $700/month, Ephrata’s median rent is slightly higher than the cities above, but still substantially lower than Washington in general.

Ephrata is located in central Washington, just east of Quincy.

Ranking as the second most affordable city our list of cheapest places to live in Washington is Connell, a city about 40 miles north of Kennewick. Residents of Connell pay the lowest proportion of their income for homes in Washington, so it’s super simple to pay off your mortgage in no time here. The median home price in Connell is $161,400 and the median income is $71,831. If you’re not ready for the commitment of a mortgage, then renting in Connell is also quite affordable. The median rent in Connell is $951, which is about a third the cost of the average rent in Washington.

Located in central Washington, Quincy is the third cheapest place to live in the state. “Opportunities Unlimited” is the city’s motto, and boy is that true in monetary terms.

The median income in Quincy is $57,731 and the median home price is $165,700, giving the city the eighth lowest ratio of home price to income in Washington. And while rent in Quincy is slightly higher than #1 Connell, renters pay the sixth lowest proportion of their income for rent in Washington. Couple these low bills with free activities like hiking around Ancient Lakes, and your savings will grow faster than you know what to do with them.

Located 20 miles southeast of Yakima, Toppenish is the fourth cheapest place to live in Washington. At a median price tag of $142,300, Toppenish boasts some of the cheapest homes in the state. And with residents earning a median income of $52,981, you’ll have the mortgage paid off before you even finish unpacking. As a bonus, you can see loads of spectacular art in Toppenish without spending a dime, because the city has over 75 murals to see. Trying to spot them all would be an inexpensive way to spend the day in Washington’s fourth most affordable city.

With a population of 74,266, Pasco is by far the biggest city on this list, so if you want affordability without sacrificing big city amenities, this is the place for you. And with Sacajawea State Park in your backyard, it’s not like you’ll be super far from nature either.

At $222,000 and $927/month for median home price and rent respectively, Pasco may seem a touch on the pricey side of this list. But residents are paid more as well, with a median income of $64,756. That doesn’t put Pasco in the top ten statewide for either home price or rent to income ratio, but solid rankings in each category places Pasco firmly on this list.

Moses Lake is a city in Grant County, Washington, United States. The population was 20,366 as of the 2010 census. Moses Lake is the largest city in Grant County. The city anchors the Moses Lake Micropolitan area, which includes all of Grant County, and is part of the Moses Lake-Othello combined statistical area.

The seventh most affordable city in Washington is Wapato, a suburb of Yakima. Washington may have one of the highest rents in America, but nobody’s told Wapato, where the median rent is a measly $752. That’s bound to make Seattleites jealous. At $109,400, Wapato also has some of the cheapest homes for sale in Washington. Even better, the home price to income ratio is the fifth best in the state.

Centered around the cities of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, West Richland is the eighth cheapest city in Washington.

A word of warning about West Richland — you’ll need to secure a high-paying job before the city’s affordability becomes apparent. With a median home price of $292,500 and a median rent of $1,409, housing in West Richland is about 30% pricier than the next highest cities on this list. However, because residents earn a median income of $102,974, folks pay a smaller proportion of their salaries for housing.

Located between Yakima and Kennewick, Grandview is the ninth cheapest city in Washington. With a combination of both a middle-of-the-pack median home price and median income at $148,300 and $50,444 respectively, Grandview has the tenth lowest home price to income ratio in the state. You can save even more money by buying your produce at Bill’s Berry Farm instead of the grocery store.

Prosser is a city in and the county seat of Benton County, Washington, United States, along the Yakima River with only one zip code 99350. The population was 5,714 at the 2010 census.

Cheapest Places To Live In Washington FAQs

What county in Washington has the lowest cost of living?

The county in Washington with the lowest cost of living is Snohomish County. The average living wage in Snohomish County is $103,576 according to MIT data. Snohomish County has the lowest cost of living because it has relatively less expensive childcare and housing costs compared to Washington as a whole. Childcare costs $21,546 a year in Snohomish County for two children compared to the Washington average of $19,075. Housing costs, defined as a blend of the average rent and average mortgage payment, are $22,872 per year in Snohomish County compared to $17,877 on average in Washington.

What is the cost of living in Washington?

The cost of living in Washington is 5.9% higher than the US average. According to MIT, the required living wage for a family of four with two working parents in Washington is $95,068 vs the national average for a family of four with two working parents of $89,744. The median income of a Washington household is $77,006.

What is the cheapest housing market in Washington?

The cheapest housing market in Washington is Wapato. The average home value in Wapato is $109,400, the lowest in the state. The average home value in Washington is $366,800, almost 3.4 times higher than Wapato.

Methodology: How We Determined The Most Affordable Places To Live In The Evergreen State For 2022

The two most important things to think about when it comes to being able to afford if you can live comes down to:

1. How much do money do I make?
2. How much do I have spend to live there?

You need to understand your costs in the context of how much money you make.

For example, if the median household earns $100,000 and spends $40,000 on housing it’s actually cheaper to live there than a place with a median income of $50,000 and housing costs of $21,000. You might spend more on housing, but you have more money overall to play with.

With that example in mind, we derived several statistics from the latest Census American Community Survey 2016-2020 around incomes and costs. They are:

• Median Home Price / Median Income (lower is better)
• Median Income / Median Rent (Higher is better)
• Median Home Price

We added simply median home price because high home prices generally correlate with higher expenses for all costs related to homes (heating, electricity, etc).

You can then compare these metrics in each of the places in Washington to figure out which is the least expensive.

What you are left with is a “Cost of Living Index” by taking the average rank of each of these metrics for each city.

So we used that cost of living index in order to rank all of the 121 places in Washington that have more than 5,000 people.

The place with the lowest cost of living in Washington according to the data is Ephrata. You can download the data here.