A well-known real estate truism is that housing prices in America’s biggest cities are much higher than the national average. New Yorkers, for example, often complain that thousands of dollars a month in rent only gets them a tiny one-bedroom apartment, especially in Manhattan, and one might assume that’s the case for every major metropolitan area across the country.

According to recent census data, it does hold true that it’s expensive to buy or rent a home in the city - but there isn’t one monolithic real estate climate across the country, and each city has a separate economy and demography, so there are some surprising differences in how much it costs to live from city to city. SmartAsset takes a deeper look at the rent-to-income ratio price-to-rent index to show the different housing markets in four of the biggest US cities… Read more at SmartAsset

This article is part of series based on Moven’s infographic on housing spend.  Join the conversation on Twitter @getMoven.