Austin "Best Bang For The Buck" on Forbes List

Say what you will about real estate prices downtown and boutiques shilling $300 designer denim—at least as far as the rest of the country is concerned, Austin is the best city to get a good value for your dollar.

Forbes magazine's latest survey of America's Best-Value Cities places Austin at the top of the list, thanks to our stellar job growth projections (also ranked at #1), low inflation rating (#24), and respectable median cost of living rank (#5). We weren't the only place in the Lone Star State to earn such recognition, either: San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston are all among the top ten.

"Texas, as a whole, is one of the few economies that's performing extremely well because of the energy and technology sectors," said Andrew Gledhill, an economist at Moody's Economy.com, to Forbes.

In Texas' major metro areas, economists predict job growth to be at least 2% by 2012. This, coupled with low housing costs and the fact that most homes here are able to hold their values rather well, makes the state a great choice for folks hoping to find a deal, says the magazine.

To ensure that our list reflected future value instead of past bargains, we began by looking at projected job growth through 2012 in the 40 largest U.S.-Census-defined metropolitan areas of the country with data from Moody's Economy.com.

Texan cities were a clear winner, with economists predicting job growth of at least 2% by 2012 in Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. By comparison, job growth in cities at the bottom of our list, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Cleveland, is expected to be about 0.2%.

We then calculated the ratios between each city's median house price and median household income, using 2000 U.S. Census figures, the latest available, and 2007 data from the National Association of Realtors. Next, we compared median income to Moody's cost of living index.

Final factors included the average gas price in each city on a given day in October as collected by AAA, and year-over-year inflation growth as calculated by Moody's and Forbes.com.