Canada and the United States, city by city
25 cities, and 216 towns and municipalities across nine metro areas, covered the same way on both sides of the border: every community in those 25 with its own sourced, dated guide, and the arithmetic of buying a home in all 241 worked out on that country's actual mortgage rules and that province or state's actual closing costs. Nothing borrows the other country's conventions. Start with the country you are thinking of living in.
Semi-annual compounding, CMHC insurance under twenty percent down, and whatever the province charges to move a title.
Where to live in CanadaMonthly compounding on a thirty-year loan, and private mortgage insurance that federal law makes the lender cancel.
Where to live in the United States6 cities neighbourhood by neighbourhood, plus 72 municipalities in Canada
Six cities, four of them west of Ontario, every community with its own guide, plus three metropolitan regions with figures and calculators but no guides: the twenty-eight municipalities around Montreal, the twenty-four around Toronto and the twenty other municipalities of the regional district around Vancouver. One set of national rules under all of them, and the province deciding the transfer tax, the rent control and the registration fees, except in Quebec, where the transfer tax is the municipality's, and in Toronto, which is the one city in Canada allowed to charge a second one of its own.
Live in Calgary
Calgary is four quadrants around Centre Street and the Bow, and where you land in that grid shapes the commute, the schools and the price more than the house does. This is a guide to the city one community at a time, 200 so far, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Vancouver
Vancouver is 22 official local areas pressed between the mountains and the Fraser, and which side of Ontario Street you land on shapes the price, the school catchment and the commute more than the home does. This is a guide to the city one community at a time, 22 local areas, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Victoria
Victoria is a city of 12 neighbourhoods squeezed into 19.5 km², with twelve other municipalities pressed against its edges, so which side of a boundary street you land on changes your tax bill, your recreation card and your school catchment, not just your commute. This is a guide to the city one neighbourhood at a time, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Kelowna
Kelowna is a 212 km² city strung along 20 kilometres of lakeshore, and the difference between the bench, the valley floor and the hillside decides your commute, your school catchment and your insurance premium more than the house does. This is a guide to the city one neighbourhood at a time, 12 of them, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Ottawa
Ottawa is a million people spread over 2,788 km² with a federal greenbelt cut through the middle of it, and whether you land inside that ring or beyond it decides your commute, your tax bill and your housing type more than the house does. This is a guide to the city one neighbourhood at a time, 28 of them, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Toronto
Toronto is six municipalities that were merged in 1998 and still argue about it, 2.8 million people over 630 km², and one market that has quietly become two. In July 2026 the City's detached benchmark was $1,455,200 and its apartment benchmark $551,900, and over the previous year the first fell 4.4% while the second fell 7.1%. In the district around the Annex that gap runs from 2.2% to 14.7%. These are 24 neighbourhood guides, six in each of the City's four community council areas, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside, including the land transfer tax this city charges twice.
Live in Greater Montreal
Two towns on the island of Montreal, nine kilometres apart, share a police force and a fire service, and one charges its homeowners more than twice what the other does. Built from Quebec's own assessment roll and municipal budget file, with the 2006 demergers that produced fifteen separate municipalities inside one island explained rather than assumed.
Live in the Toronto metro
Ontario has not reassessed property since 2016, so every rate a council here publishes is charged against a decade-old value, and prices have not moved evenly since. A typical home in Brock Township is now worth 2.43 times its assessment and one in Milton 1.26 times, both taxed on the old number. This layer carries the published rate and the rate that actually lands, derived the same way for all twenty-four, and the two columns rank the region differently.
Live in Metro Vancouver
Not a statistical area someone drew on a map but a federation with a board, a budget and a levy on every tax bill in it. Each municipality has its own hub and its own two calculators, built from one provincial table. The advertised property tax rate ranks these twenty places almost exactly backwards, which is what the comparison is for.
Ville de Montréal itself is not among these and has no page on this site yet. What is here is every separate municipality around it, including the fifteen that demerged from it in 2006 and are still inside the island. Quebec is the one province where the transfer tax is set by the municipality rather than above it, and the one where the sales tax on a CMHC premium (9%, payable in cash at closing) is the highest in the country. The rate spread across this region is a map of where the commerce is: an airport, a refinery or an industrial park inside the boundary and the houses are taxed lightly; nothing but houses and they are not. Ordered by distance from Place Ville Marie.
The City of Toronto is not among these: it has a full city hub and four neighbourhood guides at /toronto, and a place gets one hub. What is here is every lower-tier municipality of the four regional governments around it, measured from the board's own price index and the province's own tax return. Every one of the twenty-four fell in value over the year to July 2026, and the apartment index fell harder than the detached one almost everywhere. None of them charges the second land transfer tax Toronto does, which on a benchmark purchase is worth about fifteen thousand dollars. Ordered by distance from Nathan Phillips Square.
The municipality with the lowest tax rate in this region also has the highest tax bill, because a budget divided across a wealthier assessment base needs a smaller rate. Every page here leads with the bill instead, parcel taxes and utility charges included. Those charges run from $1,459 a year in Port Coquitlam to $4,776 in Lions Bay, and they appear in nobody's advertised rate. Ordered by distance from downtown Vancouver.
19 cities neighborhood by neighborhood, plus 120 municipalities and 24 towns in the United States
19 cities covered neighborhood by neighborhood (Charlotte, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Boston, Raleigh, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, El Paso, Jacksonville, Port St. Lucie, St. Petersburg, Cape Coral, Hialeah, Tallahassee and Greensboro), with the towns of the Charlotte metro beside one of them, four Florida metros measured on exactly the same two indexes in the same month, and Greater Boston on those same two indexes under a tax system that shares nothing with any of them. The three Florida cities are deliberately in both tiers: each has guides of its own and each is still a row in its metro table, because those comparisons are of municipalities and the largest one belongs in them. Boston works the same way: the row stays in the Greater Boston table, the hub moves out to /boston, and the city is covered neighborhood by neighborhood as well as measured against the twenty-three municipalities around it. Raleigh is the second North Carolina city and the first American hub with no metro layer around it yet, on the same state rules as Charlotte and a county that now revalues every two years. Austin is the second such hub and the first in Texas, which has no income tax and no transfer tax and collects instead through a property tax that five taxing units levy on a value the appraisal district resets every year. Dallas is the second Texas city, on the same state rules and the same homestead arithmetic, with its own county, college district and hospital district on the bill and a school district that takes a second exemption of its own. Houston is the third and the largest, the one city of the three with no zoning code, where deed restrictions do that work block by block, and a bill with more lines on it, because Harris County levies separately for flood control, the port, its hospital district and its Department of Education. San Antonio is the fourth, whose electric and gas utility and water system the City owns, and where more residents live in Northside ISD than in the school district named for the city. Fort Worth is the fifth, the fastest-growing of the country's million-person cities, spread over five counties, with a water district on the bill that takes no homestead exemption at all. El Paso is the sixth, across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juárez, on Mountain time and the western power grid rather than the state's own, and with the highest combined property tax rate of the six. Jacksonville is the fourth Florida city and the first with no metro table around it: the City and Duval County have been one government since 1968, so a single millage table covers all of the county but its four beach and rural towns. Port St. Lucie is the fifth, the fastest-growing American city of more than 200,000 people since 2020, laid out by a developer as quarter-acre lots on a grid of canals and now growing west through master-planned communities whose development districts add their own assessments to the tax bill. St. Petersburg is the sixth, and the second hub cut out of the Tampa Bay table on Tampa's terms: its row stays in that table, the figures on its hub are that row's, and the city is covered area by area as its guides are written. More of what lies inside its limits is water than land, and in September 2024 Hurricane Helene put the largest storm surge on record into it. Cape Coral is the seventh, across the Caloosahatchee from Fort Myers and in no metro table here: a developer platted it from 1958 as numbered units of lots on canals, the City is still bringing water and sewer to its north area by area through assessments on the tax bill, and in September 2022 Hurricane Ian's surge reached 6 to 9 feet above ground at the river mouth. Hialeah is the eighth, and the second hub cut out of the Miami-Dade table on Miami's terms: its row stays in that table and the figures on its hub are that row's, and the city is covered area by area on the lines of its own master plan as its guides are written. It runs its own fire department and libraries, so neither county district levy is on its tax bill, and two in five of its residents live in a FEMA flood zone, most of it mapped for shallow flooding. Tallahassee is the ninth and the last of the Florida run, the state capital and in no metro table here: more than a quarter of its residents are college students, the City owns the electric, water, sewer and gas utilities and bills its fire, stormwater and garbage charges on the utility bill rather than the tax bill, and its storms arrive as wind and falling trees rather than surge. Greensboro is the third North Carolina city, after Charlotte and Raleigh, and like Raleigh in no metro table here: five campuses inside its limits, a tax bill of two lines with no fire district, and both lines still charged on the County's 2022 values, because the state put Guilford's 2026 reappraisal off to the 2027 bills and the City and the County raised their rates instead. Five state property tax systems now, and the Massachusetts one is the only place where the rate a town publishes runs in the opposite direction to the rate its residents pay.
Live in Charlotte
Charlotte is a bank town on a ridge with no river, no ocean and no natural edge, which is why it has annexed its way to 308 square miles and why the difference between one side of Independence Boulevard and the other decides your commute, your school assignment and your tax bill more than the house does. This is a guide to the city one neighborhood at a time, 26 of them, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside it.
Live in Miami
Miami is a city of 36 square miles inside a county of thirty-four municipalities, and most of what is written about it describes something else: the county, the metro, or a separate city called Miami Beach. This is the City itself, one neighborhood at a time, 13 of them so far, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside. The two facts that decide more than any other are elevation and the year a building was put up: this is the flattest large city in America and the one with the most condominium stock now facing funded structural reserves.
Live in Tampa
Tampa is one of only three incorporated municipalities in a county of 1.5 million people, which means most of what people call Tampa (Brandon, Carrollwood, Town 'n' Country, Westchase) is not in the city at all. Inside the limits, the fact that decides more than any other is how far above the bay an address sits: this city spans forty-five feet of elevation between Davis Islands and Belmont Heights, and after the 2024 storm season that difference is being priced. These are 16 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Orlando
Almost nothing people call Orlando is the City of Orlando. Winter Park and Maitland are separate municipalities; Dr. Phillips, Celebration and Horizon West are unincorporated county; the theme parks are in Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake. What is left is a city seventy-six to a hundred and seventeen feet above sea level, which is why the storm-surge argument that dominates Miami and Tampa on this site barely applies here, and why the cost that actually surprises buyers is a community development district assessment that appears on no tax table. These are 16 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Boston
Boston publishes the second highest residential tax rate of the 24 municipalities within eleven miles of its own City Hall, and a resident owner here pays 0.69% of what the house cost, which is among the lowest bills in the metro. The residential exemption is the whole of that gap, and it reaches nobody who rents the building out. These are 23 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside and the city measured against the twenty-three municipalities around it on the same two indexes and the same fiscal year.
Live in Raleigh
Raleigh was laid out in 1792 on a grid bounded by North, South, East and West Streets and has annexed its way to 152 square miles since, which is why a 1920s bungalow in Five Points and a new house in Wakefield share one city and one tax rate. The state's own ratio study puts Wake County's assessments at 95% of what houses sell for, and the county revalues again on 1 January 2027 and every two years after that, so the gap between the bill and the market does not get long to grow. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Austin
Austin was laid out in 1839 on a grid between two creeks above the Colorado River and has annexed its way since to 325 square miles and just over a million people, reaching into Williamson and Hays counties. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: five taxing units on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Dallas
Dallas grew from the spot beside a ford on the Trinity where John Neely Bryan settled in 1841 into a city of 340 square miles of land and 1.3 million people, most of them in Dallas County and some in Collin and Denton, with Highland Park, University Park and Cockrell Hill left as separate towns inside it. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: five taxing units on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Houston
Houston is a city of 641 square miles of land and 2.4 million people, nearly all of them in Harris County and some in Fort Bend and Montgomery, with Bellaire and West University Place separate cities with their own tax rates. It has never adopted zoning, so what a street can become is set by its deed restrictions, and much of it sits on flat ground that floods. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: eight taxing units on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in San Antonio
San Antonio is a city of 499 square miles of land and 1.5 million people, almost all of them in Bexar County, with Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, Terrell Hills and other separate cities inside it and a ring of unincorporated subdivisions beyond its limits. The City owns its power company, CPS Energy, and its water system, which still draws about half its water from the Edwards Aquifer, and Joint Base San Antonio employs 74,713 people directly. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: seven taxing units on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Fort Worth
Fort Worth is a city of 352 square miles of land and just over a million people, almost all of them in Tarrant County, and it added 19,512 residents in the year to July 2025, more than any American city but Charlotte. About half its people live in Fort Worth ISD and the rest in more than a dozen other school districts, the Trinity runs through it between levees that a new bypass channel north of downtown is being built to relieve, and the Barnett Shale under it carries nearly two thousand producing gas wells. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: six taxing units on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in El Paso
El Paso is a city of 259 square miles of land and 683,012 people, at the far western tip of Texas, where the Rio Grande becomes the border: Ciudad Juárez, across the river, counted 1,512,450 at Mexico's 2020 census, and the City owns the American side of three of the bridges between them. Fort Bliss had 41,527 direct employees in 2025, most of them on active duty. The Franklin Mountains run through the middle, and the water comes from the river, two aquifers and a desalination plant. Texas levies no income tax and no transfer tax, so what a house costs to hold here is mostly its property tax: five taxing units, at a combined rate higher than any other Texas city on this site, on a value the appraisal district resets every year, less the homestead exemptions an owner has to apply for. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Jacksonville
Jacksonville is a city of 747 square miles of land and 1,017,689 people, and since 1968 it has been one government with Duval County: one mayor, one council and one general tax rate for city and county together, with only Jacksonville Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach and Baldwin outside it. The St. Johns River runs through the middle of it, and in 2017 Hurricane Irma pushed the river higher downtown than any storm on record, into Riverside and San Marco. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for, and an insurance bill that covers wind and not water. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Port St. Lucie
Port St. Lucie is a city of 119 square miles of land and 268,062 people, up from 204,826 in 2020, which makes it the fastest-growing city of its size in the country, and it is two-thirds of St. Lucie County. Most of it is houses: four households in five own their home. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, seventeen levies less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for; the City's garbage and stormwater assessments, which no exemption touches; often a community development district's lines on the same bill; and an insurance policy that covers wind and not water, on a coast where two hurricanes came ashore three weeks apart in 2004. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg is 62 square miles of land and 74 of water at the southern end of the Pinellas peninsula, across Tampa Bay from Tampa, and 267,102 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2024. It is the bay's second city and a row in this site's Tampa Bay table, and the figures on this hub are that row's: Zillow's two indexes for the city and the 19.9197 mills Pinellas County publishes for it. In September 2024 Hurricane Helene put the largest storm surge on record into the city, over six feet, and Milton followed two weeks later; the City assessed 13,494 parcels for damage after Helene alone. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for, and an insurance policy that covers wind and not water. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Cape Coral
Cape Coral is 106 square miles of land on the north bank of the Caloosahatchee, across the river from Fort Myers, and 236,264 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, up from 194,004 in 2020. Almost all of it was laid out from 1958 by one developer as numbered units of lots on canals: the City's parcel records put 20,889 lots on salt water and 16,881 on fresh, and City water reaches 93,343 of its 137,402 parcels, with the rest still on wells and septic tanks. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, thirteen levies less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for; the City's fire, stormwater and garbage assessments, which no exemption touches; on a lot in the north, the assessment that brings City water and sewer in; and an insurance policy that covers wind and not water, on a coast where Hurricane Ian's surge reached 6 to 9 feet above ground in September 2022. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Hialeah
Hialeah is 22.9 square miles north-west of downtown Miami, inside the line the City draws, and 235,388 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2024, the second-largest city in Miami-Dade after Miami itself. It is a row in this site's Miami-Dade table, and the figures on this hub are that row's: Zillow's two indexes for the city and the 18.6468 mills on the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser's chart for it. The City runs its own fire department and its own libraries, so neither county district levy is on the bill. It is a working city as much as a residential one: small post-war houses on small lots, a great many of them with additions, low-rise apartment buildings, and a large warehouse and industrial base. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for, and an insurance policy that covers wind and not water, in a city where 40% of residents live in a FEMA flood zone. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Tallahassee
Tallahassee is Florida's capital, 103 square miles of land in Leon County and 204,902 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, up from 196,182 in 2020. It is a college town as much as a capital: on the Census Bureau's 2024 survey 27.2% of residents aged three and over were enrolled in college or graduate school, and owners occupy 44.5% of its homes. The City owns the electric, water, sewer and gas utilities, and bills its fire, stormwater and garbage charges on the monthly utility bill rather than the tax bill. Florida levies no income tax, so what a house costs to hold here is its property tax, nine levies less a homestead exemption an owner has to apply for; the City's charges on the utility bill, one of which this site could not price; and an insurance policy that covers wind and not water, in a city where storms arrive as falling trees and lost power rather than surge. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Greensboro
Greensboro is 135 square miles of land in Guilford County and 308,667 people on the Census Bureau's estimate for July 2025, up from 299,035 at the 2020 census: the third-largest city in North Carolina. UNCG, NC A&T, Bennett College, Greensboro College and Guilford College are inside its limits, 13.5% of residents aged three and over are enrolled in college or graduate school, and owners occupy 49.8% of its homes. A house here pays two levies, the County's and the City's, and both are charged on the values of the 2022 revaluation, because the state put the County's 2026 reappraisal off to the 2027 bills and both governments raised their rates instead. Stormwater and solid waste come on the City's water bill. These are 20 neighborhood guides, with the arithmetic of buying here worked out alongside.
Live in Tampa Bay
The fourth Florida layer, and the only one on this site where a housing market is visibly repricing a risk. Hurricane Helene put the largest storm surge on record into this bay in September 2024 and Milton followed two weeks later; every municipality here but one has fallen in value since, and the one that has not sits on a bluff.
Live in Greater Boston
The first Massachusetts layer, and the one where the published tax rate is furthest from the rate anybody pays. Nine of these municipalities take a flat slab off an owner-occupier's assessed value and fifteen do not, which opens a fourfold spread in the effective rate inside one metro under one set of state laws, running in the opposite direction to the rates the towns publish.
Live in Miami-Dade
The third Florida layer, which means the state's rules are held constant three ways over and only the local differences remain: five municipalities that run their own fire departments, a deed tax that exists in this county and no other in Florida, and a condominium market still absorbing the law written after Surfside.
Live in Boca Raton and the Palm Beach coast
The same state as the Orlando metro, the same exemption, the same Save Our Homes cap and the same two Zillow indexes in the same month, so the difference between the two Florida layers isolates one variable, which is the Atlantic. It turns up on the insurance line rather than the tax line, and it roughly doubles it.
Live in the Orlando metro
Florida has no state income tax, and this is where you find out what it costs instead. Measured on the same two Zillow indexes and the same month as the Charlotte metro, which makes the two directly comparable. The effective property tax rate here runs about seventy per cent higher, before insurance that costs three-quarters again as much.
Live in the Charlotte metro
The ring outside the city limits, from Pineville at 10 miles out to Shelby at 40. Each town has its own hub and its own two calculators, run on its own county's tax rate. The ones across the South Carolina line are assessed on a different system, not just a lower number.
Hillsborough County has 1.5 million people and three incorporated municipalities; Pinellas, across the bay, has twenty-four in 280 square miles. One bay, two opposite answers to who governs a suburb. Both counties publish a total millage per taxing district, so nothing in the tax column here is assembled on this site. What is an estimate is the insurance line, banded by storm surge exposure, and it is the cheapest coastal insurance in Florida on the coast that took the largest surge. 23 of these 24 municipalities fell in value over the year measured. Ordered by distance from downtown Tampa.
Massachusetts abolished most county government by 2000, so everything on a tax bill here is municipal and there is no stack to assemble: the Department of Revenue certifies one residential rate and one commercial rate per town. What that published rate does not show is the residential exemption, a flat dollar slab 9 of these 24 municipalities take off an owner-occupier's assessment and the other 15 do not, worth up to four and a half thousand dollars a year and reaching nobody who rents the building out. It opens a 3.6-fold spread in the rate a homeowner actually pays. The twenty-four are the largest municipalities whose town hall is within eleven miles of Boston City Hall, ordered by distance from it.
More than half of Miami-Dade lives in the unincorporated county and cannot appear in a municipal table at all. Those addresses pay an Unincorporated Municipal Service Area levy in place of a city rate. Among the municipalities that do appear, the five running their own fire departments skip a 2.3965-mill county levy, which reorders the table. Ordered by distance from downtown Miami.
Palm Beach County levies a Fire/Rescue MSTU of 3.4581 mills on municipalities that contract the service and nothing on those running their own department, a conditional worth a fifth of a tax bill, which is why the rate column here does not follow the municipal rate column at all. And the insurance line, which decides more than anything else on this coast, is an estimate rather than a municipal fact. Ordered by distance from downtown Boca Raton.
The millage a Florida council adopts is not the rate a buyer pays: the homestead exemption takes $25,000 off for every levy and another $25,000 off for all but the school district, and every figure here derives that rather than quoting the headline. What none of it can show is a community development district assessment: $1,200 to $3,000 a year in the newer parts of this metro, on no millage anywhere. Ordered by distance from downtown Orlando.
Charlotte's metro crosses into South Carolina, where property tax works on an entirely different system (assessed at 4% of value for an owner-occupier, with the school operating millage exempted), and the effective rate ranges from 0.55% to 1.07% across the metro. The towns below are ordered by distance from uptown.
Photographs: Calgary from the air by Michael Weinold, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Skyline of Vancouver by Quintin Soloviev, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Inner Harbour at dusk by DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Kelowna from Knox Mountain by Gladgan, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Parliament Hill from the Ottawa River by Matti Blume, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The skyline from the lake by Erik Drost, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Uptown from the air by CamiJBoo, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The city from the water by P. Hughes, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown Tampa by Clément Bardot, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown from Lake Eola by JER3L1337, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Skyline of downtown Boston by Nkon21, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown from Dorothea Dix Park by Abhiram Juvvadi, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown across Lady Bird Lake by Hensbread, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown across the Trinity by Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown from Buffalo Bayou Park by Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The San Antonio skyline from the south by Medialecent, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Fort Worth skyline from the Trinity Trails by DerekAyala27, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · El Paso from Scenic Drive by WmCheez, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Jacksonville skyline across the St. Johns by DXR, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Lake Tradition at twilight by Serge Yatunin, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · The St. Petersburg skyline at sunrise by Andrew Heneen, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Cape Coral from the air by David Wilson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · The clubhouse at Hialeah Park by Phillip Pessar, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · The Historic Capitol and the Capitol tower by Michael Rivera, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · South Elm Street by Mx. Granger, CC0, Wikimedia Commons · Longueuil across the St Lawrence by Jeangagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Mississauga's city centre by Brian Latchman, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Sunset over Burnaby by Kevin Boyd, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons · The St. Petersburg pier at sunrise by Andrew Heneen, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Davis Square, Somerville by 4300streetcar, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Coral Gables from the air by Averette, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons · Delray Beach from the Seagate by Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons · Downtown Winter Garden by Ebyabe, CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons · Lake Norman by James St. John, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.
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Torn between two of them?
Every pair of the 25 cities with a comparison profile has its own page: home prices, rents, property and income tax, crime rates, climate, incomes and transit side by side, then what each city does better and who should pick which. Nearest pairs first, because Vancouver against Victoria is a different kind of decision from Victoria against Tampa.
A guide to living somewhere, not a listings site
Every community page keeps sourced facts apart from editorial observation: population and land area carry the census year they came from, drive times are computed from the community's official point by a documented method, and photographs are freely licensed with the photographer credited. Where a figure could not be verified, the page says so rather than rounding a guess into a fact.
The housing tools work the same way. They open with each city's real benchmark price, market rents and tax rate, and they model the rules where the city actually is: Alberta's registration fees and absent rent control, British Columbia's property transfer tax and its annual increase guideline, Ontario's land transfer tax and the sales tax it charges on a mortgage insurance premium, North Carolina's attorney closing and the private mortgage insurance federal law makes the lender cancel, South Carolina's four percent assessment ratio for an owner-occupier. The mortgage arithmetic changes with the border: Canadian loans compound semi-annually, American ones monthly, and no page borrows the other country's convention. Read the research and sourcing methodology for how the line between fact and assumption is drawn.
Naborio is written and edited by Paulo Araujo, who does the research and built the mortgage and rent-versus-buy calculators these pages run on. Nobody has lived in all 241 of these places. What stands behind the figures instead are the assessment rolls and budget files they came from, and a method written down in full on the methodology page. Corrections go to the contact page.
- Canada: 78 places
- Calgary, Alberta: 200 community guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Vancouver, British Columbia: 22 local area guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Victoria, British Columbia: 12 neighbourhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Kelowna, British Columbia: 12 neighbourhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Ottawa, Ontario: 28 neighbourhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Toronto, Ontario: 24 neighbourhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- 28 municipalities around Montreal, Quebec: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighbourhood guides yet.
- 24 municipalities around Toronto, Ontario: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighbourhood guides yet.
- 20 Metro Vancouver municipalities, British Columbia: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighbourhood guides yet.
- The United States: 163 places
- Charlotte, North Carolina: 26 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Miami, Florida: 13 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Tampa, Florida: 16 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Orlando, Florida: 16 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Boston, Massachusetts: 23 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Raleigh, North Carolina: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Austin, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Dallas, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Houston, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- San Antonio, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Fort Worth, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- El Paso, Texas: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Jacksonville, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Port St. Lucie, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- St. Petersburg, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Cape Coral, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Hialeah, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Tallahassee, Florida: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- Greensboro, North Carolina: 20 neighborhood guides, rent-versus-buy and mortgage calculators.
- 24 Tampa Bay municipalities, Florida: housing figures and both calculators each; the City of Tampa at the middle also has its own hub and neighborhood guides, and St. Petersburg across the bay a hub of its own.
- 24 Greater Boston municipalities, Massachusetts: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighborhood guides yet; the City of Boston at the middle also has its own hub.
- 24 Miami-Dade municipalities, Florida: housing figures and both calculators each; the City of Miami at the middle also has its own hub and neighborhood guides, and Hialeah to the north-west a hub of its own.
- 24 Palm Beach coast municipalities, Florida: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighborhood guides yet.
- 24 Orlando metro municipalities, Florida: housing figures and both calculators each, no neighborhood guides yet.
- 24 Charlotte metro towns, North and South Carolina: housing figures and both calculators each, no community guides yet.
- Nothing here is a listing, a lender quote or financial advice.