Published August 15, 2026

Colorado Springs vs Huntsville 2026: Cost of Living, Home Prices, BAH and Taxes Compared

Written by Ben Nemec

Colorado Springs, Colorado at dusk below snow-covered Pikes Peak, compared with Huntsville, Alabama on cost of living

The TLDR Answer: Huntsville, Alabama costs about 9% less than the U.S. average to live in. Colorado Springs costs about 1% more. The median home here is roughly $345,000 versus about $457,000 there, and Alabama exempts military retirement pay, BAH and BAS from income tax while letting you deduct your federal taxes on your state return. The catch nobody mentions: Huntsville's Basic Allowance for Housing runs meaningfully lower than Colorado Springs, so the net gain for an active-duty household is real but smaller than the price gap alone suggests. Here is the whole comparison, line by line.

The headline numbers, side by side

Category vs. U.S. average	Huntsville, AL	Colorado Springs, CO
Overall cost of living	9% lower	1% higher
Housing	27% lower	2% higher
Utilities	9% lower	21% lower
Groceries	1% higher	3% higher
Healthcare	8% lower	4% lower
Transportation	4% lower	1% lower

Colorado Springs wins on utilities. Huntsville wins on everything else, and the housing gap is wide enough that it dominates the overall number.

Housing: what the same money actually buys

	Huntsville / Madison County, AL	Colorado Springs, CO
Median sale price	$345,000 (Q2 2026)	about $457,000 (mid-2026)
Months of inventory	3.4	—
Average days on market	47	about 23 days to pending
New construction share of sales	30%	—
Sold below original list price	43%	—
Year-over-year price change	up 1.8%	about 1.8% lower

Two things worth pulling out. First, the price gap is roughly 24.5%, so a household selling at the Colorado Springs median and buying at the Madison County median frees up more than $110,000 in purchase power before costs. Second, about a third of the Huntsville market is new construction, which is unusual and genuinely helpful when your report date is fixed but months out. You can time a build slot in a way you cannot time a resale bidding war. See our new construction resources.

If you want to calibrate your own sense of value before you visit, get on Home Finder 1.0 and watch listings for a few weeks. It is the fastest way to learn what $450,000 buys in Madison versus Hampton Cove versus south Huntsville.

Brick ranch home with a large lawn in a Huntsville, Alabama neighborhood

BAH: the number that offsets some of the savings

If you are active duty, this is the line that decides whether the move helps your monthly cash flow or just your net worth. Published 2026 rates for the Huntsville military housing area run roughly 12% to 24% below Colorado Springs, depending on rank and dependent status.

Pay grade	Huntsville, with dependents	Colorado Springs, with dependents	Difference
E-5	$1,797	$2,358	$561 lower (23.8%)
E-7	$2,133	$2,487	$354 lower (14.2%)
O-3	$2,226	$2,595	$369 lower (14.2%)
O-4	$2,445	$2,778	$333 lower (12.0%)

Official 2026 rates from the Defense Travel Management Office BAH Rate Lookup, for military housing areas AL003 (Huntsville) and CO046 (Colorado Springs). BAH changes annually and varies by ZIP code and dependent status, so confirm your own figure at travel.dod.mil before you build a budget on it.

The rank feeling the most pressure is E-5 with dependents, where the allowance drops by nearly a quarter. The offsetting facts: the average Huntsville three-bedroom apartment ran about $1,582 as of August 2026, metro apartment vacancy was still near 17.7% at the end of 2025 with heavy concessions, which sits comfortably under E-7 with-dependents BAH and close to E-5's, and utilities, healthcare and transportation all cost less here. For officers, the smaller BAH gap plus the much lower home price makes the move clearly favorable.

Free download

The full cost comparison, with official DoD numbers

BAH with and without dependents for both military housing areas, property tax worked out on a $400,000 home in every local jurisdiction, Alabama income tax treatment line by line, and a net-effect read for each household type.

Get the free 21-page report →

Property taxes: the counterintuitive part

You will read a hundred times that Alabama has the lowest property taxes in the country. That is true at the state level and misleading at the city level. Here is the accurate version.

Location	Effective rate on market value	Median annual bill
City of Huntsville, AL	about 0.56%	about $1,363
City of Madison, AL	about 0.68%	about $2,129
Colorado Springs, CO	about 0.37%	about $1,671

Read that carefully. Colorado Springs has the lower effective rate, because Colorado assesses residential property at a small fraction of market value. Huntsville still produces the lower absolute bill because homes cost so much less. And Madison is the highest-tax municipality in the county at 69.5 mills, which is the price of the state's fourth-ranked school district.

The mechanics in Alabama: owner-occupied homes are Class III, assessed at 10% of appraised value. On a $400,000 Huntsville home that is $40,000 assessed, times 58.0 mills, or about $2,270 a year. The same home in the City of Madison at 69.5 mills is about $2,730. Homestead exemptions apply, and homeowners 65 and older with limited income, or who are permanently and totally disabled, can be fully exempt from property tax.

House key resting on a calculator, representing the cost comparison between Colorado Springs and Huntsville

Income taxes

Item	Alabama	Colorado
Structure	Graduated, top rate 5% above $3,000 single / $6,000 joint	Flat rate
Federal income tax deductible on state return	Yes — one of very few states	No
Military retirement pay	Fully exempt	Partially exempt by age
Civil Service Retirement System benefits	Exempt	Partially exempt by age
BAH, BAS and combat pay	Exempt	Not taxed as income federally either
Active duty base pay (state residents)	Taxable	Taxable
Social Security	Fully exempt	Partially exempt

Two cautions. Active duty base pay is taxable if you establish Alabama legal residency, which many relocation articles get wrong. And the Alabama exemption statute names the Civil Service Retirement System specifically; it does not name FERS. If you are a FERS annuitant, get that confirmed by a CPA rather than by a blog, including this one.

What you give up, honestly

A comparison that only lists wins is not useful. Things Colorado Springs does better:

Utilities cost about 21% below the national average there versus 9% here, and Alabama summers mean higher cooling loads for more months.
Climate and terrain. Huntsville sits at the southern end of the Appalachians with real hills and 60 public parks, but it is not the Front Range. If your family's identity is built around fourteeners and dry air, that is a genuine loss and worth naming out loud.
Humidity. July and August here are what they are.
No nonstop flight to Colorado Springs. Huntsville International serves 18 nonstop airports including Denver, so getting back to see people means a connection.

Things that surprise people in Huntsville's favor: metro unemployment sat at 3.3% in June 2026, professional and business services is the largest private sector at roughly 70,600 jobs, Cummings Research Park is the second largest research park in the country, and Livability named Huntsville the number one best place to live in the United States for 2026. For a working spouse, that job market depth matters more than any single cost line above.

Garden of the Gods with Pikes Peak in the background near Colorado Springs, Colorado

A worked example

Take a family that owns a $457,000 home in Colorado Springs with $180,000 of equity, and buys a $400,000 home in the City of Huntsville.

Purchase price: $57,000 less, and that $400,000 buys a materially larger or newer house here than $457,000 does there.
Property tax: roughly $2,270 a year in Huntsville. On a $457,000 Colorado Springs home at 0.37%, roughly $1,690. Colorado Springs is about $580 a year cheaper on this one line.
Overall cost of living: about 10 percentage points lower here, which on a $120,000 household budget is real money every month.
If retired military: retirement pay is fully untaxed by Alabama, which for a typical O-5 pension is worth several thousand dollars a year.
If active duty: subtract the BAH difference for your rank from the gains above.

The pattern that emerges: the move is strongly favorable for officers, retirees and civilians, and closer to neutral-to-modestly-positive for junior enlisted with dependents. That is a more useful answer than "Alabama is cheap."

Frequently asked questions

Is Huntsville cheaper than Colorado Springs?

Yes. Overall cost of living is about 9% below the national average in Huntsville versus about 1% above it in Colorado Springs, and the median home price is roughly $345,000 versus $457,000.

How much lower is BAH in Huntsville?

Roughly 12% to 24% lower depending on rank and dependent status, with the largest proportional drop at E-5 with dependents. Confirm your exact rate with the official DTMO calculator.

Does Alabama tax military retirement?

No. Military retirement pay and Survivor Benefit Plan annuities are fully exempt from Alabama income tax, as are Civil Service Retirement System benefits and Social Security.

Are property taxes really lower in Alabama?

The bill is lower; the rate is not always. Huntsville's effective rate of about 0.56% is higher than Colorado Springs' 0.37%, but much lower home values mean the actual annual bill is smaller. Madison, Alabama runs about 0.68%, the highest in the county.

Will my Colorado Springs house sell?

Colorado Springs was running about 23 days to pending in mid-2026 with prices roughly flat to slightly down year over year. Coordinate your listing date with your Huntsville search rather than doing them sequentially, or you may end up making one of the two decisions under pressure.

Is Huntsville's market going to spike because of Space Command?

Prices rose 1.8% year over year in the second quarter of 2026, which is moderate. The relocation is spread across roughly six years at about 280 positions a year, so the more likely effect is sustained pressure in specific price bands and school zones rather than a market-wide surge. Read the full timeline in our Space Command relocation guide.

Run your own numbers with someone who lives here

I grew up a military brat, so I know the difference between a spreadsheet that says a move works and a family that feels like it works. Team Nemec helps Space Command and Redstone-bound households pressure-test both: what your equity buys in each neighborhood, what your actual gate commute looks like, and where the school and tax lines land.

Call or text Ben Nemec at (256) 361-5593 or reach out here. If you are earlier in the process, start with Home Finder 1.0.

Ben Nemec is an Associate Broker and Team Leader of Team Nemec at Capstone Realty in Huntsville, Alabama. This article is general information, not tax or financial advice. Confirm tax questions with a CPA and BAH figures with the Defense Travel Management Office.