Collaborative international cost-of-living index • Hacker News Board

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#41

Post by nilkn » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

VolatileVoid wrote: post #13

You're comparing cost of living without taking into account median salaries? I don't think any comparison is complete without some sort of salary survey.

I don't think salary is necessary at all for this data to be useful. In fact, I think accurately portraying salary differences in different regions is a far harder problem than accurately portraying general COL differences.

In particular, this data can be immensely useful if you live in X with a known salary and you have an offer for a different salary in Y, and you're wondering how it'll stack up. This will answer that question for you.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#42

Post by beachstartup » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:48 PM UTC

santa monica, ca doesn't exist in their database.

and looks like "los angeles" is too large to have accurate numbers.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#43

Post by fiatjaf » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

Historical data! We want historical inflation data!

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#44

Post by coev » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

whybroke wrote: post #14

Wherever numbeo and expatistan get their data, it's utterly hilarious that the summaries rank San Jose CA about the same as Valanecia/Alicante Spain. Let me just say, there is an absolutely ludicrous error somewhere.

The site says Miami is 5% more expensive than San Jose. That's a horrible lie.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#45

Post by eightofdiamonds » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:57 PM UTC

You do get some strange differences. For example I compared Cincinnati to Savannah Georgia. It says a TV costs 2x as much in Savannah and that a $129 microwave in Cincinnati costs $500 in Savannah. Odd numbers like this throw off the total.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#46

Post by lucisferre » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

kator wrote: post #26

Would be nice to take into consideration Sales Tax, Income Tax and Property Taxes. In the states it can be fairly misleading if you ignore these factors as some states have no personal income tax as an example and others have crazy sales tax and personal income tax combined with property tax. All these drain a persons resources when they move from one locale to another. Not sure how to capture "soft" stuff like healt…

Sales taxes shouldn't be too hard to include, but I noticed the exact same problem in the comparison.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#47

Post by andrechile » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 3:00 PM UTC

For Santiago, Chile I can confirm that prices are VERY accurate - Entered and researched about 10 price points before I found where I can actually find the list - amazing site - THANKS

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#48

Post by bpicolo » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 3:20 PM UTC

pisarzp wrote: post #9

carbeewo wrote: post #2

This looks very similar to http://www.numbeo.com which was also created in 2009. Is it the same data?

What is more, Numbeo seems to be more exhaustive. Expatistan has only 1 accomodation data point (Monthly rent for 85 m2 (900 Sqft) furnished accommodation in EXPENSIVE area) while Numbeo give me information about different size apartments in and out of city center

More cities supported for Numbeo for me. (I.e. Berkeley is in Numbeo, at least partially, but not in the other)

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#49

Post by patio11 » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 3:33 PM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #19

pardo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment I have no plans to open the data completely. I do sometimes share the data with particular projects or developers on a case-by-case basis. If you are thinking about using the data for something interesting, you can contact me through the website.

Why not open it in a open data spirit to anyone so incentivise curious people can create nice analysis whenever they feel like it?

This will result in people attempting to outcompete his site using functionally the same business model and UX but superior SEO. c.f. StackOverflow clones.

Re: Collaborative international cost-of-living index

#50

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Jun 30, 2014, 3:40 PM UTC

kator wrote: post #26

Would be nice to take into consideration Sales Tax, Income Tax and Property Taxes. In the states it can be fairly misleading if you ignore these factors as some states have no personal income tax as an example and others have crazy sales tax and personal income tax combined with property tax. All these drain a persons resources when they move from one locale to another. Not sure how to capture "soft" stuff like healt…

Yeah some of the big states are fun.

I'm in NY, my property taxes are about 60% of my mortgage payment.