As we enter the first homebuying season since the passage of sweeping tax reforms, Redfin agents across the country are meeting a wave of emigres from high-tax states. Many are looking for lower taxes and affordable home prices, but with everything else they love about their old city: walkable neighborhoods; racial and ethnic diversity; restaurants, bars and bicycle paths.
We’ve been asked so many times about such neighborhoods that we’re publishing a guide to affordable American cities. We list the cities where people are moving, arranged from highest tax rates to lowest, then the neighborhoods within those cities that are urban, walkable and affordable. We’ve estimated tax rates by county; however, tax rates can vary within a county and may be higher or lower than we’ve noted depending upon the neighborhood.
The reason we’re seeing so many people now asking us about these places is only driven in part by tax reform, which now limits deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000. This migration of people and businesses from expensive, high-tax cities like San Francisco and New York to affordable-housing markets began a few years earlier, when housing prices first began to rise much faster than wages.