How to read this
Both columns come from the same public series read on the same day, so the comparison is fair even where the numbers are imperfect. Rent is Zillow’s observed rent index for the metro. Listing price is realtor.com’s median via FRED. Unemployment is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ metro rate for the latest month. Crime is the FBI’s latest full year: a city reads its own police department and a state reads the FBI’s state summary. A state whose FBI file covers under 90% of its residents, or a city whose department’s file falls far short of its own count, shows no reading rather than a rate that reads safer than it is. Taxes come from each guide’s sourced figures and are missing where a guide hasn’t been refreshed yet.
The verdict line at the top is written from these readings by a template, not by a model, and it changes only when the readings do.