Publisher and data notes
How WhereToHQ works
WhereToHQ is an independent US city comparison product for people choosing where to live or put a business. It combines public data with its own tax, household budget, salary-equivalence, ranking, and market-momentum calculations.
Who, how, and why
WhereToHQ publishes and maintains the calculator, computed studies, and source pipeline. The purpose is to make an early city shortlist easier to question and compare, not to replace local due diligence.
Public city and ranking text is assembled from committed facts and deterministic rules. It is not generated by a language model. Market-activity summaries, when present, come from an automated extraction process and link back to a source so the event can be checked.
Questions and corrections can be sent to support@wheretohq.com.
Comparable city records
Source files arrive at different geographic levels and on different schedules. The build joins them to one city record, preserves missing values, and labels the result as city, metro, county, state, or estimate-grade where relevant.
Decision calculations
The useful output is not a copied source table. WhereToHQ calculates household costs, bracket taxes, equivalent income, relative fit, state-median differences, and rate-of-change momentum from the available inputs.
| Facts | Geography | Primary source | Treatment and limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Population, income, housing, education, and commuting | Place, county, metro, or state depending on the field | US Census Bureau, mainly the 2024 ACS 5-year release | We join published estimates to a city record and retain the field geography. Place-level values are not presented as block- or neighborhood-level facts. |
| Employment, average pay, establishments, and occupation wages | County or metro where available, with a state fallback for some fields | BLS QCEW and OEWS | We use published wage and employment estimates as labor-market proxies. They do not predict a particular employer’s hiring result. |
| Home values and rent trends | City series where a matching Zillow Research record is available | Zillow Research data | We calculate month-over-month and year-over-year changes from committed ZHVI and ZORI series. Missing matches remain missing. |
| Climate | Nearest suitable weather station | NOAA US Climate Normals, 1991–2020 | We attach the nearest available station estimate. Distance, elevation, and local terrain can make a city feel different from the station. |
| Natural-hazard risk | County | FEMA National Risk Index | We use the county risk score as a broad comparison. It is not a parcel-level flood, wildfire, earthquake, or insurance assessment. |
| Commercial electricity | State | US Energy Information Administration | We use the published state commercial average as a screening proxy. A utility tariff and a specific load profile are needed for a site decision. |
| Federal, state, and selected local income taxes | Federal and state rules, plus documented local matches | 2024 brackets and Tax Foundation source tables | We transcribe brackets into a deterministic calculator. Credits, deductions, special business taxes, and many local exceptions are outside the model. |
Household budget
The calculator estimates annual housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, health care, child care, income tax, payroll tax, and sales tax. Housing uses the selected rent size or a 30-year mortgage with the user’s price, down payment, and rate. Several non-housing categories begin with a national baseline and scale by the city index and household profile. The result is a comparison estimate, not a personal budget forecast.
Income-tax calculation
Federal and state income taxes run through progressive bracket tables where applicable. The model applies the standard deduction, employee-side Social Security and Medicare, and a documented local flat rate when a city, county, or state default matches. The displayed state and local percentage is an effective rate on the entered gross income.
Equivalent income
The salary comparison solves for the gross income in a target city that leaves the same amount after modeled taxes and essential costs as the starting city. Taxes are nonlinear, so the calculator finds the answer by repeated numerical search rather than by multiplying one cost-of-living index.
Best-fit scores
For a selected group of cities, each usable facet is scaled from 0 to 100 across that group. The direction is respected, so lower rent helps while higher household income helps. The user’s weights are then combined. A missing value is neutral and a facet that cannot distinguish the group is skipped. Scores are relative to the compared set, not permanent city grades.
Market momentum
Housing momentum uses rates of change in home values and rents. Economic momentum uses available business formation, covered employment, and residential permit growth. Each present driver is placed against the national distribution, then combined with a documented weight. A city with no matching rate-of-change driver receives no score.
Data fetches are cached and joined into committed build artifacts. The build checks city coverage, source freshness where a source publishes a date, and required output files. Routine tests exercise tax brackets, household costs, fit scoring, data presence, API contracts, and browser flows without calling paid or live production services.
City pages show only available facts. Study pages publish their candidate rules, filters, ranking direction or weights, and supporting columns. A correction is made in the source record or calculation and then carried through the next build, rather than patched into one page.
Public sources revise past estimates, geography can be broader than a city, and listings, utility tariffs, insurance, incentives, and taxes can change after a data release. Use these pages to form questions and a shortlist. Verify a final decision with current primary records and qualified local advisers.