The cost of living from state to state

A buyer looking to move to a new state needs to consider costs beyond the mortgage payment, costs that can vary greatly.

Property taxes are climbing with home values in many cities, and so is the cost of insurance, as natural disasters mount. What will it cost you to gas up for your commute to work? Factor in the cost of childcare, if that is a concern, and the state sales and income taxes before you decide whether the move is in your best interest economically.

Major cities in California and parts of New York City were the most expensive places to live in the first nine months of 2024, according to the nonprofit Council for Community and Economic Research, which compiles an index that measures housing and other costs such as food. In that report, released in January, the group said small Midwestern cities and a few in the South are the most affordable.

These regional variations hold true even as high mortgage rates and a limited supply of new and existing homes for sale have driven up housing prices everywhere.

A commonly used method for homebuyers to assess whether they’ll pay too much to buy a house is if they’ll spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale area is where the most homeowners (35%) were “cost-burdened" in 2023, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That’s up 32% from four years earlier. By contrast, only 16% of households were cost-burdened in 2023 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and that’s down almost a percentage point from 2019.

The share of people spending too much on housing tends to track with median sales prices. In Miami, the median price for an existing single-family home in March of this year was $760,000, according to Homes.com data. That was nearly three times the median in Little Rock.

Taxes and insurance are also quite different from place to place. In New Jersey, the average one-year property tax bill last year exceeded $10,000; in West Virginia, it was barely one-10th that, according to real estate data firm ATTOM.

Florida, which suffers from frequent hurricanes, ranked second among the states in average homeowners insurance cost in 2025 for $300,000 in coverage, at $5,292, according to Bankrate.com, trailing only Nebraska at $6,030. Vermont ranked last at $839.

The Center for Neighborhood and Technology, an Illinois-based nonprofit economic development agency, says the cost of living far from one’s home, measured in the amount spent on gas and vehicle repairs, plays a major role in affordability. In Manhattan, residents on average spend 26% of their income on housing and another 10% on transportation, according to the center. A resident of Phoenix spends 24% and 18%, respectively, on those two expenses.

In New York, where a single subway ride costs $2.90, public transit is likely a bigger part of most people’s transportation budgets than in Phoenix, where more residents rely on their cars. Gas was $4.83 per gallon in California in late April, but $2.68 in Mississippi, according to the American Automobile Association. While gas prices tended to be higher (the West Coast) or lower (much of the South) by region, there were exceptions. A high state gas tax accounted for Pennsylvania’s relatively high prices, while costs were substantially lower in some neighboring states.

On average, New Yorkers and Floridians also pay the most for car insurance, $4,192 and $4,151 a year, respectively, while the same full coverage costs only $1,472 in Idaho and $1,515 in Vermont.

It cost $25,480 in Washington, D.C., in 2025 for a year of infant childcare alone, according to LendingTree, which was more than anywhere else in the country. South Dakota was at the other end of the spectrum, where the cost was $7,862.

When it comes to the overall cost of raising a child, Hawaii pays about $36,472 a year — tops on the tally. Massachusetts follows close behind with an annual cost of $33,004. South Carolina and Alabama had the lowest financial burden: $17,699 and $17,840, respectively.

In 2025, California had the highest sales tax rate at 7.25%, according to the Tax Foundation, while Colorado’s was just under 5% and five states had no sales tax at all.

Income taxes are harder to compare, because some states have flat rates, while others graduate their rates by income level. The Tax Foundation said the highest possible rate is 13.3% in California, while North Dakota and Arizona top out at 2.5%. Eight states have no income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.