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QUESTION: I'm looking for cost-of-living information for a city that is not included in the Geographic Assessor database. Should I just use the nearest city that is reported as a substitution?
Subscribers who are new to the Geographic Assessor may be accustomed to working with more general data. That is, ERI reports cost of living data for specific cities (within city limits) and towns, rather than metro areas or regional averages. The reason for this is housing.
Unlike wage and salary market pricing, where proximity to major labor markets will predict pay levels, housing prices are not predicted by distance. For example, wage and salary differentials are driven by the major metropolitan areas, and "nearby" cities are expected to pay similar, though lower, wages as you move away from downtown. In the case of housing prices, next-door neighbor suburbs often have very different reputations and housing prices. Because cost of living is driven by housing costs, beware of substituting one "neighboring" city for another or a metro or county average for a specific location. In the case where the Geographic Assessor databases does not report a city you need to analyze, please consider the following suggestions:
Contact ERI and request that the city be included in a future update.
In the meantime,
| 1. | Review the lowest and highest home price cities for which ERI does report COL in that area to get a feel for home price ranges. |
| 2. | Consult with local branch office management and determine if another city in that area is comparable for housing costs and use it as a fair substitute benchmark. |
| 3. | Alternatively, consult with a local realtor for the same information. |
| 4. | Establish a local benchmark living area (either individual city or user-defined average of multiple acceptable living areas) and always use that as the COL standard for workers within the same job class at that branch office. |
ERI does not recommend:
| 1. | Creating and using a User-Defined Average of the county of the area in question. |
| 2. | Randomly selecting a substitute city. |
| 3. | Using the closest geographic neighbor as a substitute. |
If there are any areas not included in the Assessor Series which you would like to see added, please contact ERI. In most cases where adequate survey information exists, ERI can accommodate requests by adding the new area to the following update (released twice each quarter).
For more information about the locations available in your current subscription or the Assessor Series databases, see Data Availability.