Every Year, U.S. News and World Report releases their Top 100 places to live in the United States and Albany is not only in the top 100 but got as high as 36! I wonder if they're are using the right criteria for this study.

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Seriously nobody is happier than me that we got into the top 100, as a life long resident I truly love the Capital Region. I can see a whole lot of reason why this is a great place to live but deep down inside I wonder if they included taxes in this study idf we would have fared so well.

Let's stay positive here though, why was Albany and the surrounding area chosen as one of the top 100 cities to live in? Truth is we excel in quite a few areas.

1. Housing costs. It turns out we have great cost of housing in the area as compared to income. I should say though that after looking at the entire study , it's not so much that our incomes have gone up as the prices of houses has gone down in the last 10 years and I'm not sure as a homeowner that I'm thrilled with that statistic

2. Income. This is actually a great statistic, it turns out we here in the Capital District have higher household incomes than many of others in the U.S.A. and in New York State.

3. Unemployment. The unemployment rate in Albany is a full point lower that the average in the U.S.

4. Education. Many High Schools here in our area rank as the best in the State and contend well with the rest of the country.

5. Charm. One of the things referenced by the study was that while The Tri-Cities of the Capital Region constitute a "city", they have the charm, lower crime rates  and family values of smaller communities.

The biggest drawback to life here in the Albany area was that it is an aging community. According to the study while the average age in Albany is currently 31 , lower than the rest of the state and country, by the year 2020 the age group of 45 - 65 will be a "significant" portion of the population.  It seems the younger portion of the population are leaving in droves for the more populous metropolitan cities.

 

 

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