Most Expensive Places To Live In Ohio For 2020

The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In Ohio For 2020

1. Oxford

Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern portion of the state. It lies in Oxford Township, originally called the College Township. The population was 21,371 at the 2010 census. This college town was founded as a home for Miami University. In 2014, Oxford was rated by Forbes as the "Best College Town" in the United States, based on a high percentage of students per capita and part-time jobs, and a low occurrence of brain-drain.

The median income in Oxford comes in at $27,238 and the median home value is $198,700 for 2020.

2. Athens

Athens is a city in and the county seat of Athens County, Ohio, United States. It is located along the Hocking River in the southeastern part of Ohio. A historic college town, Athens is home to Ohio University, and is the principal city of the Athens, Ohio Micropolitan Statistical Area. The official population of Athens in the 2010 U.S. Census was 23,832.

The median income in Athens comes in at $27,435 and the median home value is $190,200 for 2020.

3. Beachwood

Beachwood is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and a suburb of Cleveland. As of the 2010 census the city's population was 11,953.

The median income in Beachwood comes in at $89,706 and the median home value is $296,600 for 2020.

4. Bowling Green

Bowling Green is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, Ohio, United States. The population was 30,028 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Toledo Metropolitan Area and a member of the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments. Bowling Green is the home of Bowling Green State University.

The median income in Bowling Green comes in at $35,310 and the median home value is $166,200 for 2020.

5. Kent

Kent is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the largest city in Portage County. It is located along the Cuyahoga River in Northeast Ohio on the western edge of the county. The population was 28,904 in the 2010 Census and was estimated at 30,071 in 2016. The city is counted as part of the Akron Metropolitan Statistical Area and the larger Cleveland-Akron-Canton Combined Statistical Area.

The median income in Kent comes in at $36,441 and the median home value is $144,200 for 2020.

6. Aurora

The median income in Aurora comes in at $94,141 and the median home value is $268,900 for 2020.

The median income in John comes in at $49,621 and the median home value is $152,300 for 2020.

8. Cincinnati

Cincinnati is a major city in the U.S. state of Ohio that serves as county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the north side of the confluence of the Licking with the Ohio River. With a population of 298,800, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and the 65th-largest city in the United States. It has the fastest growing economic power of the Midwestern United States and 28th-biggest metropolitan statistical area in the United States, the biggest in Ohio. The city drives the Cincinnati-Middletown-Wilmington combined statistical area, which had a population of 2,172,191 in the 2010 census.

The median income in Cincinnati comes in at $38,542 and the median home value is $129,100 for 2020.

9. Columbus

Columbus is the state capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Ohio. It is the 14th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 860,090 as of 2016 estimates. This makes Columbus the 3rd-most populous state capital in the United States after Phoenix, Arizona and Austin, Texas, and the second-most populous city in the Midwestern United States, after Chicago. It is the core city of the Columbus, Ohio, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses ten counties. With a population of 2,021,632, it is Ohio's third-largest metropolitan area.

The median income in Columbus comes in at $51,612 and the median home value is $143,000 for 2020.

10. Grandview Heights

The median income in Grandview Heights comes in at $95,033 and the median home value is $342,500 for 2020.

How We Determined The Most Expensive Places To Live In The Buckeye State For 2020

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 2014-2018 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 Ohio 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 253 places in Ohio that have more than 5,000 people.

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