Accolade for Alamo City
San Antonio cashes in among cheapest places for millennials to live
While Austin may hoard much of the hype about the best places for millennials to live, San Antonio vaults over its northern neighbor in a new ranking of the cheapest spots in the U.S. for the millennial generation.
On September 13, personal finance website GoBankingRates.com released its 50 Cheapest Places for Millennials list. Among Texas’ four biggest cities, San Antonio grabs the highest rank on the list (No. 18).
To produce its ranking of the country’s 50 most affordable cites for millennials, GoBankingRates.com analyzed data for more than 700 cities with at least 50,000 residents and at least a 21.6 percent millennial share of the population. The website then examined factors including the overall cost of living, median monthly rent, median home price, and three-year change in a city’s millennial population.
According to GoBankingRates, this is how San Antonio stacks up:
- 2017 share of millennial residents: 22.8 percent
- Three-year change in millennial population: 0.8 percent
- Median monthly rent: $1,316
- Median home price: $245,000
Nearby, San Marcos appears at No. 19 on the GoBankingRates list, followed by Austin at No. 38.
GoBankingRates points out that San Antonio’s cost of living sits 3.3 percent below the national average, and that the city experienced the country’s second biggest surge in the millennial population between 2014 and 2017 — an increase of 28,549 residents. In 2017, San Antonio was home to 333,345 millennials.
Forbes.com noted in 2016 that San Antonio owes much of its millennial presence to good military, tech, and healthcare jobs. The city's higher education institutions also boast nationwide attention, including Trinity University, which beat out Rice and the University of Texas at Austin last year to be named the best school in the state.
San Antonio’s relatively low cost of living also plays a role. According to an April report, a local renter needs to earn a gross annual income of $42,520 to afford rent without being cost-burdened. San Antonio's median household income is $51,302, giving locals a relatively big cushion.
Elsewhere in Texas, Killeen ranked fifth on the new list, with Houston at No. 20, San Angelo at No. 31, Abilene at No. 33, Conroe at No. 34, Temple at No. 49, and Bryan at No. 50.
