Top 10 most livable small to midsize cities where the median home price is $500,000 or less

Broomfield, Colorado, is near the famous Flatirons on the Rocky Mountain front range.bauhaus1000/Getty Images

• Escalating housing costs in major cities have Americans looking for smaller cities to settle down in.
• Livability released a list of the 100 most livable small and midsize US cities.

As sky-high housing costs are increasingly pricing people out of places like Los Angeles and New York, Americans are increasingly looking to smaller cities and rural towns to set down roots.

Millennials are moving further and further into the suburbs, while remote workers have made cross-country moves to previously low-key places like Montana to capitalize on the relatively more affordable housing and costs of living.

The influx of transplants to some of these smaller cities and towns has, in turn, raised housing costs and caused problems for locals — but not all places have passed the threshold of affordability.

Livability, a media and marketing company that ranks places based on how livable they are, released its annual list of the 100 most livable small to midsize cities in the US this week.

The list is limited to cities with populations under 500,000 people that also have median home values under $500,000. That excludes places like Miami or Oakland, for instance, which have less than half a million people but have median home prices of around $601,000 and $840,000, respectively.

Beyond size and home values, the list is based on the following factors: the economy, like unemployment rates and job opportunities; housing and cost of living; amenities like museums, parks, shopping, and nightlife; transportation, including walkability and median commute time; environment, such as air quality and natural disaster risks; safety; education; and health.

The data used to compile the list includes public sources, like the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the IRS, and private sources, including satellite imagery and business records.

Livability's list of 100 cities is not ranked in order, as you are able to filter and rank the list based on your top priorities. However, each city is assigned an overall livability score, or LivScore, using an algorithm that considers the above categories. All one 100 cities can also be viewed on a US map, so you can easily search by region or state.

The following ranking of the top 10 best small to midsize cities to live in is based on the overall livability scores.