Most Expensive Places To Live In Utah For 2020

The 10 Most Expensive Places To Live In Utah For 2020

1. Alpine

The median income in Alpine comes in at $121,667 and the median home value is $541,800 for 2020.

2. Heber

Heber City is a city in Wasatch County, Utah, United States. Heber City was founded by English emigrants who were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the late 1850s, and is named after the Mormon apostle Heber C. Kimball. It is the county seat of Wasatch County. The original Heber City town square is located on the west side of Main Street between Center Street and 100 North and currently houses city offices as well as the historic Wasatch Stake Tabernacle and Heber Amusement Hall. The city was largely pastoral, focusing largely on dairy farms and cattle ranching, and has since become a bedroom community for Orem, Provo, Park City and Salt Lake City.

The median income in Heber comes in at $69,437 and the median home value is $313,800 for 2020.

3. Cedar Hills

The median income in Cedar Hills comes in at $96,331 and the median home value is $356,700 for 2020.

4. Washington

The median income in Washington comes in at $58,815 and the median home value is $279,900 for 2020.

5. Ivins

Ivins is a city in Washington County, Utah, United States and is a part of the St. George Metropolitan Area as a suburb or "bedroom" community. The population was 6,753 at the 2010 census, and it was estimated at 6,930 in 2011. Although Ivins was listed as a town in the 2000 census, it became a city in 1998.

The median income in Ivins comes in at $57,282 and the median home value is $267,100 for 2020.

Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous municipality of the U.S. state of Utah. With an estimated population of 190,884 in 2014, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,153,340. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City-Ogden-Provo Combined Statistical Area. This region is a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along an approximately 120-mile segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,423,912 as of 2014. It is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin.

The median income in Salt Lake City comes in at $56,370 and the median home value is $289,200 for 2020.

7. Provo

Provo is the third-largest city in Utah, United States, located 43 miles south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front. Provo is the largest city and county seat of Utah County.

The median income in Provo comes in at $46,532 and the median home value is $247,100 for 2020.

8. St. George

St. George is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Utah, United States. Located in the southwestern part of the state on the Arizona border, near the tri-state junction of Utah, Arizona and Nevada, it is the principal city of the St. George Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies in the northeastern-most part of the Mojave Desert adjacent to the Pine Valley Mountains near the convergence of three distinct geological areas: the Mojave Desert, Colorado Plateau, and Great Basin. The city is 118 miles northeast of Las Vegas and 300 miles south-southwest of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15. The city is named after George A. Smith, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Apostle.

The median income in St. George comes in at $55,061 and the median home value is $261,800 for 2020.

9. Murray

Murray City is a city situated on the Wasatch Front in the core of Salt Lake Valley in the U.S. state of Utah. Named for territorial governor Eli Murray, it is the state's fourteenth largest city. According to the 2010 census, Murray has approximately 46,746 residents. Murray shares borders with Taylorsville, Holladay, South Salt Lake and West Jordan, Utah. Once teeming with heavy industry, Murray-s industrial sector now has little trace and has been replaced by major mercantile sectors. Known for its central location in Salt Lake County, Murray has been called the Hub of Salt Lake County. Unlike most of its neighboring communities, Murray operates its own police, fire, power, water, library, and parks and recreation departments and has its own school district. While maintaining many of its own services, Murray has one of the lowest city tax rates in the state.

The median income in Murray comes in at $62,174 and the median home value is $265,400 for 2020.

10. Lindon

Lindon is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Provo-Orem, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 10,070 at the 2010 census. In July 2014 it was estimated to be closer to 10,723 by the US Census Bureau.

The median income in Lindon comes in at $85,671 and the median home value is $381,800 for 2020.

How We Determined The Most Expensive Places To Live In The Beehive State For 2020

The two most important things to think about when it comes to being able to afford if you can live comes down to:

1. How much do money do I make?
2. How much do I have spend to live there?

You need to understand your costs in the context of how much money you make.

For example, if the median household earns $100,000 and spends $40,000 on housing it's actually cheaper to live there than a place with a median income of $50,000 and housing costs of $21,000. You might spend more on housing, but you have more money overall to play with.

With that example in mind, we derived several statistics from the latest Census American Community Survey 2014-2018 around incomes and costs. They are:

• Median Home Price / Median Income (lower is better)
• Median Income / Median Rent (Higher is better)
• Median Home Price

We added simply median home price because high home prices generally correlate with higher expenses for all costs related to homes (heating, electricity, etc).

You can then compare these metrics in each of the places in Utah to figure out which is the most expensive.

What you are left with is a "Cost of Living Index" by taking the average rank of each of these metrics for each city.

So we used that cost of living index in order to rank all of the 85 places in Utah that have more than 5,000 people.

The place with the highest cost of living in Utah according to the data is Alpine. You can download the data here.