The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In Idaho For 2023

The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In Idaho For 2023

1. Sandpoint

The median income in Sandpoint comes in at $53,567 and the median home value is $309,900 for 2023.

2. Hayden

The median income in Hayden comes in at $61,124 and the median home value is $292,300 for 2023.

3. Rexburg

The median income in Rexburg comes in at $44,034 and the median home value is $264,000 for 2023.

4. Coeur D'alene

The median income in Coeur D'alene comes in at $59,699 and the median home value is $309,000 for 2023.

5. Boise City

The median income in Boise City comes in at $68,373 and the median home value is $322,300 for 2023.

6. Eagle

The median income in Eagle comes in at $99,814 and the median home value is $488,500 for 2023.

7. Post Falls

The median income in Post Falls comes in at $65,592 and the median home value is $286,800 for 2023.

8. Garden City

The median income in Garden City comes in at $54,540 and the median home value is $254,700 for 2023.

9. Meridian

The median income in Meridian comes in at $85,201 and the median home value is $349,400 for 2023.

10. Moscow

The median income in Moscow comes in at $49,251 and the median home value is $251,700 for 2023.

Methodology: How We Determined The Most Expensive Places To Live In The Gem State For 2023

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 2017-2021 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 Idaho to figure out which is the most 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 33 places in Idaho that have more than 5,000 people.

The place with the highest cost of living in Idaho according to the data is Sandpoint. You can download the data here.