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Highest rents
These metro areas have the highest median rents.
Rank Metro area Median rent (for a 2-bedroom housing unit) Per-capita income
1 San Francisco, CA $1,748 $60,983
2 Santa Cruz, CA $1,713 $48,337
3 Honolulu, HI $1,706 $42,015
4 Oxnard, CA $1,591 $45,694
5 Los Angeles, CA $1,486 $42,278
6 Santa Barbara, CA $1,440 $47,302
7 San Jose, CA $1,428 $59,338
8 Boston, MA $1,424 $53,443
9 New York City, NY $1,424 $52,855
10 San Diego, CA $1,418 $44,430
11 Washington, DC $1,411 $54,971
12 Santa Rosa, CA $1,359 $46,325
13 Napa, CA $1,355 $51,218
14 Bridgeport, CT $1,303 $81,576
15 Barnstable Town, MA $1,252 $47,640
16 Vallejo, CA $1,249 $37,055
17 Miami, FL $1,236 $43,123
18 Trenton, NJ $1,229 $52,255
19 Salinas, CA $1,218 $41,256
20 Riverside, CA $1,213 $28,804
21 San Luis Obispo, CA $1,192 $38,114
22 Naples, FL $1,172 $63,276
23 Burlington, VT $1,169 $39,932
24 New Haven, CT $1,169 $44,322
25 Poughkeepsie, NY $1,160 $37,712
Source: Rent data from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 50th Percentile Rent Estimates 2009.
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 Affordable wages  Few foreclosures
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How we picked the Best Places
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.