What Does a $300K House Look Like in Cities the Same Size as Amarillo?

Not too long ago, one of our posts on what a $300K house in Amarillo looks like in comparison to 10 other big cities sparked a lively discussion with our readers. Their enthusiasm and and ideas inspired us to get a little creative. Here's the second installment of a brand new "Amarillo vs. The World" series.

The theme for this round of "What kind of house will $300k buy?" is: Amarillo vs. Cities with a similar population size.

To find what cities have a population size close to Amarillo's, I headed to good ol' Wikipedia and dug up this list. And honestly, I was not expecting these results, but we'll roll with it.

Amarillo comes in at #121 with a population of 200,393 in the 2020 U.S. Census.

And these are the cities closest to Amarillo terms of population: Salt Lake City (seriously?!), Grand Rapids, and Frisco.

I have no idea what their major industries or local economy is like but maybe the house prices will give me an idea. Let's see exactly just how similar and/or different the housing market is for these sister cities.

I'll pop open Trulia, set my max price to $300k and the minimum to $250K; next, I'll select the option for 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.

That gives me a nice number of 41 agent listings.

Boom, here's my $300k house in Amarillo: a lovely brick home on 1006 S. Milam in the Bivins neighborhood. Great neighborhood, quiet neighbors, and look how nice it is!

Let's see what $300K gets in our sister population city of Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids

Now I pull up Grand Rapids on Trulia and then put in the same specs and hit "search".

Looks like there's only 26 houses listed compared to Amarillo's 41 listings. It's narrowed down to a paltry 10 listings after filtering out the multi-units and listings that aren't technically within Grand Rapids city limits

The good news though, is that the few remaining listings seem pretty cute and definitely something I'd live in. Here's my $300k house in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

A quick comparison of Grand Rapids and Amarillo by way of a cost-of-living analyzer shows me that despite being slightly smaller, there's a surprisingly large difference in the cost of living. Specifically, rent in Amarillo is 46.72% lower than in Grand Rapids, MI

Salt Lake City, Utah

Moving along to Salt Lake City, paradise and mecca of the Latter Day Saints and a population of 199,723.

Once again, to Trulia and enter all the neat details and specs. Annnnnnnd....

Trulia says "LOL, ain't nothing here for you, boo". 

Okay, alright. I'm moving along.

Frisco, Texas

Frisco has a nice population of 200,509--making them just a smidge larger than Amarillo. Very nice, and we're both Texan cities. Cool. Let's see what's in Trulia.

HA. These people are high if they think I am paying $265K for a mobile home that Walter White worked out of. I'll buy my houses in good ol' Amarillo, Texas.

No thank you. I won't do it. This housing market is killing me.