Clear Lake, South Dakota, is proud of its strong, traditional values. Clear Lake, SD Cost of living makes a big difference when choosing where to move — and not all places were created equal.

We found the most affordable small town in every state.

To do this we looked at towns with populations between 1,000 and 10,000 whose households spend no more than 30% of their annual income on housing costs. We looked at the average cost of three types of housing — owned houses with a mortgage, owned houses without a mortgage, and rentals — and took a weighted average of these by the proportion of each type of home in the town.

Click here to read more about our methodology.