While Baltimore has long been touted as a more affordable option to Washington, D.C., it’s still a lot more expensive to live here than in most of the nation.
Baltimore ranks 84th for affordability among the country’s 100 largest metro areas, according to a new Business Journals analysis of the latest data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Regional Price Parity Index. The index shows how costs compare in a metro compared to the national baseline of 100. That means a metro with an index of 90 would be 10% more affordable than the national average, for example. That index includes the cost of housing, services and goods as well, providing a more complete picture of affordability.
The data is from 2020, so it doesn’t include much of the significant inflation that has transpired during the Covid-19 recovery, but it does show which metros are most well-positioned to capitalize on their relative affordability and which metros could be hurt by a flight to affordability.
