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City in California, United States

Santa Barbara

$1.8MMedian Home
348Sunny Days/yr
View on Map· Pop. 89k· Elev. 49 ftWikipedia

Santa Barbara is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting Alaska, the city lies between the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Santa Barbara's climate is often described as Mediterranean, and the city has been dubbed "The American Riviera". As of the 2020 census, Santa Barbara had a population of 88,665.Wikipedia

State Context

CaliforniaU.S. state

California is a state in the Western United States that lies on the Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California to the south. With almost 40 million residents across an area of 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the largest state by population, third-largest state by area and the largest state economy in the U.S., with a GDP of approximately $4.3 trillion.Wikipedia

Income tax: 1.00% - 14.40%Avg sales tax: 8.85%Property tax: 0.69%Official school data available

About the Region

California

California contains multitudes in a way that makes any single characterization misleading. The Bay Area and Los Angeles operate as global city-states, with housing markets, income levels, and cultural gravity that put them in direct competition with London and Tokyo rather than with other American metros. Both have lost net domestic migrants to lower-cost states for most of the last decade — primarily to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada — though both also continue to be net draws for international migration and maintain labor markets of extraordinary depth and diversity.

But California's geography is vast. The Central Valley offers costs of living that rival the Midwest with driving distance to the Sierra Nevada; the North Coast is one of the most beautiful and least-crowded stretches of American coastline; and the smaller cities of the inland valleys represent genuinely different lifestyle profiles. For remote workers who can absorb the state income tax and housing cost, the combination of climate diversity, outdoor access, and cultural institution density remains difficult to replicate anywhere in the world.

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Current Conditions

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Cost of Living

Housing
$4k/mo
Median Rent
$1.8M
Median Home Price
Rent burden45% of income
Household Income
$98k
Median annual
04

Livability

Walk Score
99
Transit Score
54
Internet
Fiber
33%
Cable
98%
address availability
05

Climate

Sunshine
348
sunny days per year
95% of the year
Comfort Score
70/100
Good
Rainfall
22"
inches per year
Air Quality
37
Good AQI
07

Demographics

Population89k
Altitude49 ftabove sea level
Median Age40 yrs
College Educated51%bachelor's or higher
Work From Home15%of workforce
Poverty Rate13%

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