Most Expensive Places To Live In Texas For 2020

The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In Texas For 2020

1. College Station

College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, situated in East-Central Texas in the heart of the Brazos Valley, in the center of the region known as Texas Triangle. It is 90 miles northwest of Houston and 87 miles northeast of Austin. As of the 2010 census, College Station had a population of 93,857, which had increased to an estimated population of 117,191 as of September 2017. College Station and Bryan together make up the Bryan-College Station metropolitan area, the 14th-largest metropolitan area in Texas with 255,589 people as of 2015.

The median income in College Station comes in at $42,964 and the median home value is $226,400 for 2020.

2. Prairie View

The median income in Prairie View comes in at $26,313 and the median home value is $167,100 for 2020.

3. Huntsville

Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas, United States. The population is 38,548 as of the 2010 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area.

The median income in Huntsville comes in at $32,137 and the median home value is $162,500 for 2020.

4. San Marcos

San Marcos is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, within the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area. It is on the Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio and is the seat of Hays County. Its limits extend into Caldwell and Guadalupe Counties, as well. Its population was 44,894 in 2010. In 2015 the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the population at 60,684

The median income in San Marcos comes in at $37,593 and the median home value is $163,500 for 2020.

5. Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg is the seat of Gillespie County, in the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a population of 10,530.

The median income in Fredericksburg comes in at $49,888 and the median home value is $273,500 for 2020.

6. Granbury

Granbury is a city and the county seat of Hood County, Texas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 7,978 and is the principal city of the Granbury Micropolitan Statistical Area. Granbury is located 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth, Texas.

The median income in Granbury comes in at $45,380 and the median home value is $171,700 for 2020.

7. Austin

Austin, AWST-tin) is the capital of the U.S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. It is the 11th-most populous city in the United States and the 4th-most populous city in Texas. It is the fastest growing large city in the United States, the second most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona, and the southern-most state capital in the contiguous 48 states. As of the Census Bureau's July 1, 2016 estimate, Austin has a population of 947,890. Located in Central Texas in the foothills of Texas Hill Country, the city is home to numerous lakes, rivers, and waterways including Lady Bird Lake, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, the Colorado River, Lake Travis, and Lake Walter E. Long. It is the cultural and economic center of the Austin-Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1, 2016.

The median income in Austin comes in at $67,462 and the median home value is $312,300 for 2020.

8. Galveston

Galveston is a coastal resort city on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of 209.3 square miles, with an estimated population of 50,180 in 2015, is the county seat and second-largest municipality of Galveston County. It is within Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land metropolitan area.

The median income in Galveston comes in at $44,902 and the median home value is $170,100 for 2020.

9. Boerne

Boerne is a city in and the county seat of Kendall County, Texas, United States, within the Texas Hill Country. Boerne was named in honor of a Jewish-German author and publicist. The population of Boerne was 10,471 at the 2010 census. The city is noted for the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case City of Boerne v. Flores. Founded in 1849 as Tusculum, the name was changed to Boerne when the town was platted in 1852.

The median income in Boerne comes in at $63,420 and the median home value is $259,600 for 2020.

10. Addison

Addison is an incorporated town in Dallas County, Texas, in the United States. Addison is situated to the immediate north of the city of Dallas. The town's population was 13,056 at the 2010 census. Addison and Flower Mound were the only two Texas towns with a population greater than 10,000 in the 2010 census; since then the towns of Prosper and Trophy Club have also exceeded 10,000 in population estimates. Addison is best-known within the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex region for its abundance of restaurants and nightlife.

The median income in Addison comes in at $73,383 and the median home value is $325,100 for 2020.

How We Determined The Most Expensive Places To Live In The Lone Star 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 Texas 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 348 places in Texas that have more than 5,000 people.

The place with the highest cost of living in Texas according to the data is College Station. You can download the data here.