Using the Internet to Find Your Most Livable State and City
I would start with Sperling’s Best Places (www.bestplaces.net), “Compare Cities” feature. The categories it compares cover all of the bases and include: People (including number of residents, ages, ethnic make-up, male/female); Economy (including recent and future job growth); Housing (average price, appreciation rate and tax rate); Health; Crime; Climate; Education; Transportation (including average commute time to work); Cost of Living, and two newer features include Religion and Voting. It also has a general description of the area and there is feature that allows people to input their own opinions about a city.
A very practical cost of living calculator can be found at www.bankrate.com. Here you can input your current income and it will determine what you would need to make in your new locale to maintain your current standard of living. What makes this calculator better than others out there is that it includes specific items such as grocery items (from beer to lettuce), insurance, movie tickets, and utilities and compares the prices of those items between the two cities as well.
If you have no idea what city you would like to relocate to, but would like to know what city has the most men, or cheapest housing, etc. then check out www.city-data.com “Top Lists.” They have “Top Lists” for a variety of categories which include the top 100 cities within that category. In case you were curious about cheap housing then check out the “Lowest Ratio of Median House Value to Median Income.” In case you did want to know, the top 5 cities in this category are: Fort Knox, KY, Chinle, AZ, Lackland AFB, TX, Kermit, TX, and Pecos, TX.
City-data.com also provides a great forum section where real people answer questions about living in their city.
A fun, quiz oriented website to help you in your pursuit of your perfect city is www.findyourspot.com. After you take the quiz you will be provided with a detailed report on each of your top cities. The information covered will include the housing market, crime rate, weather, things to do, economy and education. Plus, pictures of your new city hopefuls.
Last in the general website recommendations is www.morganquinto.com. This company publishes state rankings every year and while some of the information must be purchased, a lot of it can be found from last year’s report, or in their press release section. The “Most Livable” category ranks states in 44 areas including crime rate, unemployment rate, personal income and number of sunny days. This year’s Most Livable state, according to their system, is New Hampshire, and least livable, Louisiana.
Once you have narrowed down your list of potential cities to relocate to. I would suggest looking at the local newspapers. Many newspapers have online forums to give you an even better idea of what it would be like living in this area and what the people are like. Also, my personal favorite part, check out the actual housing for sale or rent, www. rentclicks.com is a great source for apartment or rental homes and many local real estate agents will offer free access to the area’s MLS.
