We’ve done a lot of rankings of places here at the Movoto Real Estate Blog for different criteria, like education or safety. But what if you’re just looking for a general area that has a lot to offer? We can help out there, too (in addition to finding you a house).
We gathered some all-important data, analyzed it, and produced this ranking of the best
counties in the nation:
1. Loudoun County, VA
2. Douglas County, CO
3. Fairfax County, VA
4. Chester County, PA
5. Somerset County, NJ
6. Morris County, NJ
7. Washington County, MN
8. Montgomery County, MD
9. Frederick County, MD
10. Rockingham County, NH
We have to give a nod to the East Coast on this one, because they sure wrapped up the top 10. Don’t worry, other states, there are plenty of you represented in the top 50.
If you’re wondering what we consider a good county, feel free to take a look at the section below, where we’ll go over our methodology. If you’re wondering where your county ranked, you can see a list of the top 50 in the country at the bottom of this article. For now, though, let’s take a look at the numbers we used.
How We Created This Ranking
We’ve made Big Deal Lists before, and this one wasn’t any different in that we worked completely by the numbers. The criteria we used, however, were a little different this time around. First, we made a list, using the 2010 Census, of all counties in the U.S. that had available data in the following areas:
- Unemployment rate (the lower the better)
- Median household income (the higher the better)
- Median rent (the higher the better, to indicate area’s desirability)
- Median home price (the higher the better, to indicate desirability)
- Percent of families below the poverty line (the lower the better)
- High school graduation rate (the higher the better)
That left us with a total of 640 counties. Any counties that did not have that data were omitted from our list.
Then, we ranked each county in each category from one to 640, with scores closer to one being better. Finally, we averaged each county’s rankings into one Big Deal Score, and the county with the lowest Big Deal Score number was our winner.
Let’s take a bit of a closer look at each of our top 10 counties and examine why they’ve earned the right to be called the best in the nation.
1. Loudoun County, VA
This is one of those instances where the winner was a pretty obvious one, just by the rankings.
The median rent here was the highest on our list, which indicated that people are willing to shell out the big bucks to call this place home. The household income rank was also No. 1, so locals can earn enough to pay for those upscale apartments.
It also helps that most people here were employed. With the fourth lowest unemployment rate on our list, at 4.85 percent, and with only 2.51 percent of families being below the poverty line, locals are likely to be comfortable financially and career-wise.
Did we also mention that it had a high school graduation rate of over 93 percent? That certainly didn’t hurt in the rankings.
2. Douglas County, CO
Though it wasn’t quite up to Loudoun standards, Douglas County was still pretty darn awesome.
With the highest graduation rate, a whopping 97.2 percent, you’re bound to get a good education here or provide one for your family. Only about 2 percent of families here were below the poverty line as well, which ranked No. 1 for that category.
People were willing to pay a pretty hefty sum to live here, but that’s okay, considering that households here made a median income of over $94,000 a year. That was enough for the third place income ranking, and likely enough to pay for the 29th most expensive housing costs on our list.
Read more.
