About
Who makes this, and where every number comes from
The Move Desk compares what it costs to live in one place against another, using published federal data rather than crowd-sourced guesses.
Most cost of living tools answer with a single index and leave you to trust it. This one shows the whole bill: rent or a home price, income tax, property tax, sales tax, groceries and utilities, side by side for two places, with the source of every line named on the page it appears on. This page explains who builds it, where the figures come from, and what they leave out.
Who runs it
The Move Desk is built and run by Shawn Siokos, a mortgage loan officer with Success Mortgage Partners, Inc. (NMLS #2008044). The site grew out of a question he was asked constantly by people relocating: not what a house costs there, but what the whole month costs once taxes, rent and everyday prices are counted.
Nothing here is an offer of credit or a commitment to lend, and the tools are free to use with no account required. If you do want to talk to a person about financing a move, that is the day job and the contact details are below.
Questions, corrections and data disputes: ContactUs@themovedesk.com, or (480) 605-1205. If a figure on this site looks wrong, write in. Every number traces back to a published table, so a disagreement can usually be settled in a few minutes.
Where the numbers come from
Four federal sources and one hand-checked tax table. Nothing is scraped, and no listing site, broker or MLS feeds any figure on this site.
American Community Survey · U.S. Census Bureau
Median rent, including rent by bedroom count; median home value; median household income; and the property tax actually paid, which is where our property tax rates are computed from rather than quoted from a third party.
Current release: 2024. Census publishes annually.
Regional Price Parities · U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
How much further a dollar goes in one place than another for groceries, fuel, goods and utilities. These are the everyday spending lines in every comparison.
Current release: 2024. BEA publishes annually.
Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
What about 830 occupations typically pay in each state and metro area, on the salary comparison page. We show the median, not the average, because a handful of high earners pulls an average away from what most people in a job make.
Released each spring, and refreshed here when it is.
State tax rules · State revenue departments and the Tax Foundation
Income tax brackets, the standard deduction and personal exemption, local income tax averages, and sales tax. Entered and checked by hand for all 51 jurisdictions, each row carrying the source it came from and the date it was verified.
2026 tax year. Re-checked every year, because tax law changes every year.
Federal tax and payroll figures · IRS and the Social Security Administration
Used in one place only: the take-home figure on a personal relocation report. Federal tax is the same wherever you move, so it never appears in a comparison between two places.
2026 tax year.
Moving costs, which no agency publishes, are modelled from published industry ranges for movers, containers, truck rental and car shipping. They are ranges on purpose, and the report says so rather than printing one confident number.
What the estimates do not include
A comparison covers housing, income tax, property tax, sales tax on everyday spending, groceries and goods, and utilities. It does not include childcare, health care and insurance, tuition, debt payments, savings, or eating out. Those vary far more by household than by place, and folding them in would make the gap between two places look more precise than it is.
Every figure is a median or an average for a whole state or metro area, so no real household matches it exactly. That is a limit of public data, not a shortcut: a state average hides how different its cities are, which is why the tool lets you narrow to a metro area, and to which side of a state line you would live on when a metro straddles one.
The game is not real data
Home Price Showdown, the guessing game on this site, uses entirely fictional homes with illustrative stock photos. It is there for fun and has nothing to do with the cost data above. Listings in the Agent Spotlight are real and provided by the agent featuring them.
Start here
Compare two places with your own income, or browse every state and metro area we have already worked out. The guides explain the parts people get wrong most often, like paying income tax in two states the year you move.