Bankrate Ranks Round Rock #1 for America’s Best Places to Live in 2023

From financial flexibility and value longevity to quality of life, we knew Round Rock was the Best Place to Live before everyone else. But, you don’t just have to take our word for it. Bankrate released their rankings for America’s Best Places to Live in 2023 and you can find our Central Texas gem that we get to call home at the top of the list.

Bankrate’s proprietary scoring model aggregated data based on five key categories: well-being, affordability, job market, diversity and migration. Here’s what they assessed on Round Rock:

1. Round Rock, TX

Plenty of people had their sights set on Austin, Texas, in 2022 — in fact, it was the second-fastest-growing city in America. This year, why not shift your target just 15 miles north to Round Rock, where you’ll have easy access to the best of Austin without its overheated, super-competitive real estate market. Round Rock isn’t simply a suburb, it’s a tech hub: Dell Technologies is headquartered here, and companies like Switch and Emerson also call it home. Plus, 80 percent of Round Rock residents live within a 10-minute walk of a public park.

• • Median home sale price: $495,000
  • Cost of living: 91.5 (national average is 100)
  • Average salary: $64,913
  • Unemployment rate: 2.5%
  • Total employees year-over-year: +8.6%
  • Well-being: 67.0 out of 100
  • Diversity: 65.9 out of 100
  • Net migration: +1.8% population increase year-over-year

Why it stands out: It may still be fairly expensive to buy a home here, but you’ll save on just about everything else in Round Rock (especially when compared with Austin proper). The city’s cost of living comes in significantly lower than the national average, proving that not everything is bigger in Texas. Buying a home here now is likely to pay off in the future, too: Round Rock’s population is projected to grow by nearly 75,000 people by 2040 — quite the jump from the 119,000 people who lived here in 2020.

You can see the full list and article here.