Money's list of America's best small cities


States
Top 100
Rank City Population
89 Ames 58,000
88 Iowa City 68,600
82 West Des Moines 58,300
Other cities
  Cedar Rapids 128,746
  Council Bluffs 63,332
  Davenport 100,827
  Des Moines 206,746
  Dubuque 58,026
  Sioux City 82,923
  Waterloo 69,477
From the September 2012 issue
Due to erroneous job, cost-of-living, and test score data for a small number of places, two cities were left off this year's top 100 and two were mistakenly included. Other cities moved up or down slightly once all data were corrected. Details.
Best Places Winners
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Home price trends
Hover over any of the 10 Best Places below to see how real estate prices have changed in the past year.
City Avg. listing price
(July 2012)
1. Carmel, IN $304,340
2. McKinney, TX $245,917
3. Eden Prairie, MN $413,566
4. Newton, MA $850,117
5. Redmond, WA $518,982
6. Irvine, CA $904,753
7. Reston, VA $467,934
8. Columbia/Ellicott City, MD $406,943
9. Overland Park, KS $278,204
10. Chapel Hill, NC $376,660

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Video
How we picked the Best Places
Using statistics from data services company Onboard Informatics, we crunched the numbers in order to zero in on America's best small cities for families. (Last year, we looked at small towns, with populations between 8,500 and 50,000.) More

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