And the updated standings for the most expensive places to live among the nation’s 50 largest cities — first, for renters …

(You can find the extra money people are paying on rent in those cities by clicking here.)

… and the most expensive big cities for home buyers:

You’ll notice the top 10 cities, while in different orders, are the same for both rent and house prices, with Bay Area buddies San Francisco and San Jose easily holding the gold and silver medals in both categories.

(While we’re here, you can check out the top 30 list of richest metro areas by clicking here.)

So why is all this craziness happening? Even though the Great Recession officially ended in 2009, it took a couple years for housing prices to shoot back up, and they’ve increased steadily ever since, especially in cities (more on the comparison to smaller towns in a bit). But even when compared to the dot-com boom at the turn of the century and the housing bubble in the middle of last decade, housing prices are higher now and wages are lower, when adjusting for inflation, in many places. And you’d think an economic upturn would mean better wages, especially after all the salary cuts and pay freezes in the recession, but pay actually hasn’t even kept up with inflation during the last four years. Even in Silicon Valley, where it seems new millionaires are minted every day, the average pay increase — tops in the nation — is just a few percentage points more than inflation.

So are we in another housing bubble? If this trend continues, by the end of the decade many cities really will be like San Francisco and Manhattan, where only the wealthy can afford a house, and only people making six-figures can keep an apartment.

There is some good news here. For starters, people who already bought their houses when it was cheaper are now sitting on relative gold mines. Rural and suburban places apparently aren’t in quite as painful a crunch as cities (I didn't study any places outside the top 50 U.S. cities, but here is the average for the entire country — including big and small towns — over the past four years: rent increased 13.7%; house prices grew 15% and incomes ticked up 4.9%; still rough, but not as bad as the biggest 50 cities), so there are still plenty of options for people priced out of the city lifestyle, if they're willing to move to the 'burbs or the country. And obviously there are more people with any income now that unemployment has dropped.

There are also a few cities among the 50 most populous where things aren’t bad at all. Cleveland, Milwaukee and Virginia Beach have seen housing prices grow at about the same, slow rate as incomes since 2011 (in other words: things have stayed cheap). And there are three places where housing has actually gotten slightly more affordable in the last four years. You can probably guess at least one of them: Detroit, Memphis and El Paso.

I first started researching these figures after I posted a couple months ago about leaving the Bay Area — my home for 11 years, with a job I loved as a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News — largely because my girlfriend and I were priced out. I was overwhelmed by the response I got, even from people outside the Bay Area, who said they were going through something similar. But I honestly didn’t think other cities were enduring much of a crisis, and was shocked the further I delved into the numbers, city by city.

Here is my full list of rent, home cost and income growth statistics in each of the 50 most populous U.S. cities, followed by a full list of current rent, house prices and wage growth in each city. I used Zillow's comprehensive city-specific databases for the rent and home price data (comparing May 2011 to May 2015), and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for income data (that data exists by metro area, only, for most cities), then did the percentage change calculations. U.S. inflation during this time was about 6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Comments? Want more data? I’d love to hear your story. Tweet me at twitter.com/RosenbergMerc or email rosenberg.mike@yahoo.com

And lastly, the full list of current average rents, house prices and wages in each of the big 50 cities, ranked by current average rent:

Mike Rosenberg has been a journalist for the past eight years, most recently as a staff reporter for the San Jose Mercury News.