Texas has least expensive cities, New York, California most costly

Daily Mail:

The New York boroughs of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn nabbed three spots on the list of the 10 most expensive cities to live in the U.S. -- while towns in Texas scored among the cheapest.

Not surprisingly the island of Manhattan nabbed the top spot with the most expensive housing, according to a new report released by the Council for Community and Economic Research (C2ER) which indexed the cost of living in 300 cities across America.

While California cities were found to be equally pricey, locales down South fared among the least expensive.
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With metro areas and holiday hot spots among the most enviable locales, towns in the U.S. South were found to be among the least expensive areas.

Harlingen, Texas, a border town on the southern tip of the Lone Star state, came in at the cheapest, with a cost of living index at 81.6 or 18.4 per cent below the national average.
Two other Texas towns, Wichita Falls, in North Texas, and McAllen, near Harlingen, came in second and third.

Cities in neighboring Oklahoma were found to be equally inexpensive in addition to Memphis, Tennessee, Fayetteville, Arkansas and Springfield, Illinois. 

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Harlingen and McAllen have been attracting Mexicans fleeing the violence on the other side of the border. They have also traditionally gotten their share of snowbirds or Winter Texans as they are called.   I went to high school in San Benito, which is just to the south of Harlingen.  Also on the list of inexpensive Texas towns is San Marcos which is between Austin and San Antonio on I-35.  It is also home to Texas State University. It is near several recreation areas.  Of the four Texas towns listed it is the one that is most likely to see higher appreciation of home values because of its proximity to two major cities.

One of the thinks that has always made the Rio Grande Valley towns seem more isolated is you have to go through the huge King Ranch to get down there.  They used to have a sign saying the next gas station was 50 miles away.

I know several people who moved to Texas from both New York California and they were all surprised to see how much higher a standard of living they can have in Texas because the home prices are so reasonable. Both California and New York suffer under building restrictions that make it difficult to build new housing at reasonable prices.  These restrictions also led to people having to use sub prime mortgages to get into the homes before the housing debacle.