What salary do you need to live in Springfield, MO?

Springfield housing costs at a glance

Renters in Springfield pay a median $950 a month for two bedrooms. Size matters: one bedroom is $786, three bedrooms $1,238, so going from the smallest to the largest of the three adds $5,424 a year.

Buying is the other half of the housing picture: owners put the median home in Springfield, MO at $230,700. With median household income at $65,071, a typical home costs 3.5× a typical income, close to the middle of the range across US metros.

The Regional Price Parity, BEA's index of local prices with the US at 100, is 88.6 here. Below 100 means a paycheck stretches further: $100,000 in Springfield has the buying power of roughly $112,886 at national average prices.

How much you need to earn in Springfield

With a two-bedroom at the median rent, the score enters Tight at $25,000, Okay at $50,000 and Comfortable at $101,000 a year before tax. At the Comfortable line, a year of rent takes 11% of income and the median home is 2.3× income.

Reaching Royal takes $254,000 — 2.5× the Comfortable line — because the last points come slowly once rent is already a small share.

How they were found: the same scoring function the calculator runs was evaluated at rising incomes until each cutoff was crossed, and the crossing rounded up to a whole $1,000.

Springfield at four common salaries

On $75,000, a one-bedroom scores 60 and a three-bedroom 53, both Okay; the extra bedrooms cost points but not a grade.

Read down the two-bedroom column and the first Comfortable row is $150,000, consistent with the $101,000 line above.

Where Springfield falls nationally

On price level Springfield is 321st of 387 (1 = most expensive); on two-bedroom rent it is 331st, and on median home value 243rd. The two rankings agree, both falling in the least expensive quarter.

Next to Springfield on the national rent ranking: Saginaw, MI ($953) and Erie, PA ($949).

Springfield in a Missouri context

Statewide, Missouri's median two-bedroom rent is $1,027 and its median home value $230,300. Springfield's rent is −7% against that, and its home value 0%; the price parity is 88.6 versus 90.8 for the state.

Run Missouri's statewide medians through the same score and Comfortable begins at $110,000; Springfield's line is −8% from that.

Within Missouri, the metros closest to Springfield on rent and overall prices are Joplin, MO-KS, Columbia, MO, and St. Joseph, MO-KS. Their Comfortable lines for two bedrooms sit at $80,000, $111,000, and $82,000.

Springfield's median income on the scale

The median household in the metro earns $65,071 (ACS 2020-2024). Run through the calculator with two bedrooms, that scores 53, Okay. That falls $35,929 short of the $101,000 Comfortable line, a reminder that the typical household here spends a larger share on housing than the Comfortable band allows. Statewide, the Missouri median household ($70,702) grades Okay on the state's own medians. Keep in mind a household median often combines two incomes.

Treat every number here as a pre-tax, public-data estimate rather than financial advice.