The 10 Cheapest Places To Live In Wyoming For 2022

The 10 Cheapest Places To Live In Wyoming For 2022

Kemmerer is no stranger to the Homesnacks spotlight; we already named it the best place to raise a family and the best place overall in Wyoming, so you know that this spot ticks all the boxes. The fact that you can get all that for the lowest price in the state is just icing on the cake. If you’re a paleontology nerd, you’re in luck, because Kemmerer is home to Fossil Butte National Monument and other sites where you can dig for and keep any and all fossils you find.

The median home price in Kemmerer is $143,000 and the median rent is $622/month.

Basin is located in northern Wyoming off of Route 20, east of Bighorn National Forest. This small town of some several thousand people is the county seat of Big Horn county. The annual county fair is a big draw in town and there is plenty of affordable activities for families.

Where Basin stands out in cost of living metrics housing costs, which are considerably less than the national average. Basin has the second cheapest homes and third cheapest rent anywhere in wyoming. The median home price in Basin is $110,600, while you can find a place to rent for just $621.

Folks in Marbleton should have no problem believing that they live in one of the states with the cheapest rent in America. That’s because, with a median price of $764 and a median income of $65,417, Marbleton residents pay the 12th smallest portion of their salaries on homes statewide. Thanks to a median income 15% higher than the Wyoming average, Marbleton is also in the top ten for home price to income ratio, despite having some of the priciest homes on this list.

We’ve all heard that Red Bull gives you wings — well, Greybull gives you savings.

Greybull has the third least expensive homes in Wyoming, with a median price tag of $117,900. More importantly, residents of Greybull pay the fourth lowest percentage of their income on buying a home, which leaves plenty of money left over to do other things. Like devoting the day to following dinosaur tracks at the Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite. On the flip side, Greybull is one of the least economical places to rent on this list, so be sure you’re ready to commit to a mortgage before making the move.

Rounding out our list of most affordable places to live in Wyoming is Thermopolis, a popular destination for locals and out-of-staters alike. Folks from all over come to take a free dip in the 104 degree waters at Hot Springs State Park and to have a look at the Wyoming bison herd as a bonus. That’s not all though; for a town of only 2,747 people, trust me when I say there’s tons to do in Thermopolis. If you do decide to settle down in Thermopolis, a home will set you back about $157,600, the 11th cheapest in the state. What’s more, you’ll have the seventh best home price to income ratio in Wyoming.

Evanston sits along I-80 in the far eastern part of Wyoming. Another hour and a half down the road and you’ll get to Salt Lake City, Utah. Evanston provides more than a good place to stop for gas as you travel cross country. It also offers its 11,727 residents excellent value as the number 6 cheapest place to live in Wyoming.

In fact, Evanston boasts the 15th lowest median home price in the state, with a figure that hovers at $169,300. You’ll get a good deal on an apartment as well. Median rents in the area come in at $652. Generally speaking, the cost of living is about 90% of the U.S. average.

Taking a look at other economic measures, the median income in town is $62,356. The unemployment rate stands at 5.37%. The crime rate is about 25% below the national standard.

Rawlins comes in as the seventh cheapest place to call home in the Cowboy State for 2022. Rawlins is home to the Wyoming Frontier Prison, now a museum detailing the grizzly past of the old west. Those days are far behind Rawlins, though. Now it’s just the place with the tenth best home price to income ratio in Wyoming. With more than a quarter of the population being Hispanic, Rawlins is also the most diverse city in Wyoming.

According to the 2022 data, Worland tops our charts for most affordable places to live in Wyoming. Worland has the ninth cheapest homes for sale in the state, with a median price of $152,000. What’s more, with a median income of $54,928, Worland residents enjoy the 19th best home price to income ratio in Wyoming. And Worland’s not a bad place to rent either; residents pay the ninth smallest percentage of their income on rent statewide. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of awesome free things to do here, like hiking the Gooseberry Badlands Scenic Overlook Trail, because Worland is one of the safest places in Wyoming as well.

Worland is located within the Bighorn Basin in north-central Wyoming.

Saratoga is one of the most popular destinations in Carbon County, and it’s not hard to see why. While some of that’s due to the great hunting and fishing in the area, more people come to take a free dip in the Hobo Hot Springs. And when summer rolls around, people roll into Saratoga to see who will win the Steinley Cup for being the best microbrewery of the year.

On the one hand, Saratoga does have the priciest homes on this list at around $212,600. On the other hand, Saratoga residents earn a median income of $81,304, which keeps the town safely in the top ten for housing to income ratios, both for those renting and buying.

At first brush, you may be confused as to why Lyman scored the #10 ranking on the list of cheapest places to live in Wyoming. I mean, with the second highest median home price on this list, Lyman’s not an obvious choice. But when you consider that Lyman is also among the richest places in Wyoming, with a median income of $86,600, things start to make sense. Thanks to the high income of residents, Lyman has the sixth best home price to income ratio and the 16th best rent to income ratio statewide.

Lyman is in southwestern Wyoming, near the Utah border.

Cheapest Places To Live In Wyoming FAQs

What county in Wyoming has the lowest cost of living?

The county in Wyoming with the lowest cost of living is Niobrara County. The average living wage in Niobrara County is $82,423 according to MIT data. Niobrara County has the lowest cost of living because it has relatively less expensive childcare and housing costs compared to Wyoming as a whole. Childcare costs $15,701 a year in Niobrara County for two children compared to the Wyoming average of $16,758. Housing costs, defined as a blend of the average rent and average mortgage payment, are $8,808 per year in Niobrara County compared to $10,423 on average in Wyoming.

What is the cost of living in Wyoming?

The cost of living in Wyoming is 4.8% lower than the US average. According to MIT, the required living wage for a family of four with two working parents in Wyoming is $85,468 vs the national average for a family of four with two working parents of $89,744. The median income of a Wyoming household is $65,304.

What is the cheapest housing market in Wyoming?

The cheapest housing market in Wyoming is Lusk. The average home value in Lusk is $105,700, the lowest in the state. The average home value in Wyoming is $228,000, almost 2.2 times higher than Lusk.

Methodology: How We Determined The Most Affordable Places To Live In The Equality 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 Wyoming 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 41 places in Wyoming that have more than 1,000 people.

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