How the Clay Indexes are computed

The short version

We show you real dollars where we measured them, and comparisons where we computed them.

Median home values, rents, and incomes on this site are actual Census figures for each town. The Clay Affordability Index (CAI) is different: it's a computed comparison — how the overall cost of one standard life varies from town to town. It is not a prediction of what you will spend anywhere, because your life isn't standard. Nobody's is.

The Clay Affordability Index (CAI)

The CAI asks one question the same way for every town in America:

If the same household — earning the U.S. median income, buying the town's median home — lived here, what would a year cost, compared to the national average?

CAI 100 = national average. CAI 78 = about 22% cheaper. We compute the answer in dollars internally, then publish only the comparison, for the reason above.

What goes into the model household's year

Piece	How it's computed	Source
Housing	The town's median home value, amortized (30-year mortgage at 6.75%, 20% down)	Census ACS 5-year
Property tax	The town's actual median real-estate taxes paid	Census ACS 5-year
State income tax	Effective rate for a married median-income household — full brackets, standard deductions, and credits, not the headline "top rate"	State law, tax year 2025; baseline Tax Foundation Jan 2025 plus cited legislative updates (GA HB 111, ID HB 40, UT HB 106, OH HB 96, MD 2025 BRFA)
Sales tax	The state's combined average rate applied to the taxable share of a standard spending basket (~60%)	Tax Foundation Jan 2025
Everyday prices	A national goods-and-services basket adjusted by regional price levels	BEA Regional Price Parities — metro area (MARPP), or the state's nonmetropolitan portion (PARPP) for rural towns
Utilities	Actual average monthly household bills — not rates. A cheap rate in a hot climate can still mean a big bill	Census ACS B25132 (electricity) and B25133 (gas), 5-year — bucketed household counts converted to a weighted-midpoint monthly bill
Insurance	State-average homeowners and auto premiums	NAIC annual reports (Homeowners Report May 2025, Auto Supplement June 2025)
Commuting	The town's average commute time converted to an annual fuel estimate (32 mph assumed speed, 25 mpg, 21 workdays/month, state gas prices)	Census ACS + EIA weekly retail gasoline

Every component is also shown individually on town pages, as a comparison to the national average — so you can see why a town scores the way it does, and ignore the parts that don't apply to your life.

What the CAI deliberately leaves out (for now)

• Healthcare costs — real state-level variation exists; a future version may add it.
• Childcare — enormous for some households, zero for others; too situational for a standard model.
• Vehicle property taxes — about half of states charge them, but the amount depends on your vehicle. We flag the states; we don't guess your car.
• Local income taxes in their limited forms (occupational and payroll taxes in a handful of states) — flagged qualitatively where they exist.

Data honesty notes

• ACS "median home value" describes ALL homes in a town, including ones that will never be for sale. That's why town pages also show a current market value (Zillow ZHVI) — the two numbers answer different questions, and the gap between them is itself informative.
• Some towns lack one or more data layers (very small towns, especially). Their CAI is computed from the available layers with the national average filling gaps, and marked "partial."
• Every vintage is displayed. Nothing on this site pretends to be newer than it is.

The Clay Business Implementation Index (CBII)

The CBII rates states (v1) on what it costs — in money and in time — to actually operate and build a business:

• Broad business taxes: gross-receipts, margin, and franchise-type taxes that apply regardless of profit — the fine print behind "no income tax" claims. (Narrowly defined: sector-specific taxes and nominal fees don't count.)
• Workers' compensation costs: each state's premium index (Oregon DCBS biennial study), shown as bands 1–5.
• Unemployment insurance: new-employer rates.
• Time to build: bands 1–5 from state environmental-review laws (CEQA-style statutes are the single biggest timeline driver) and state regulatory volume (Mercatus State RegData). This band is judgment-informed, not purely mechanical — and we say so. Bands start from a mechanical score (state environmental-review statutes + regulatory volume) and are adjusted for well-documented regimes the formula cannot see (e.g., Vermont's Act 250, Oregon's land-use system). Each override is recorded with its reason.

Bands, not dollars: your premium and your permit depend on your business. The bands tell you which decile of states you're walking into.

Sources & update cadence

U.S. Census Bureau ACS 5-year estimates (annual) · Zillow ZHVI (monthly) · FCC Broadband Data Collection (twice yearly) · BEA Regional Price Parities (annual) · Tax Foundation + cited state session laws (annual) · EIA (annual) · NAIC (annual) · Oregon DCBS (biennial) · Census CBSA delineations. Full source URLs and vintages are shown on each town page alongside the values.

One more thing

The indexes carry a person's name because a person is accountable for them. Corrections and challenges are welcome: corrections@businesslocationguide.com. If we're wrong, we'd rather know.