Living in Rochester, NY

Monroe County

Rochester is New York's third-largest city and, more than almost any other market in this project, a genuinely single-defining-story Rust Belt city: the real, dramatic rise and fall of Eastman Kodak Company. Kodak's Rochester-area employment peaked at approximately 62,000 workers; today the company employs approximately 7,100 people locally, and its entire current worldwide workforce (approximately 3,504 as of March 2026) is smaller than its former Rochester-area headcount alone once was -- a real, honest decline this record states plainly. Kodak has NOT vanished from Rochester, though: the company remains real, current, and headquartered at Eastman Business Park, a 1,200-acre campus where it continues to invest and hire, at a scale radically smaller than its historic peak. Xerox tells a related but distinct story: genuinely founded in Rochester (as the Haloid Company) and long headquartered there, Xerox's official corporate headquarters has since relocated to Norwalk, Connecticut -- verified precisely here rather than assumed unchanged. Replacing these historic anchors, real and current: the University of Rochester (including UR Medicine/URMC) is Monroe County's largest employer overall and largest private employer specifically, at approximately 27,000 employees, alongside Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT, ~17,100 students) as a real, separate second major higher-education anchor. A real, distinct optics/photonics industry cluster -- more than 150 firms, over $3.2 billion in annual output, and a labor market so tight that senior optical-engineer unemployment ran below 1.5% in 2026 -- grew directly out of the Kodak/Xerox/Bausch & Lomb precision-optics legacy and stands as a genuinely current, not merely nostalgic, piece of Rochester's economic identity. Lake Ontario forms Rochester's entire northern border, producing real, substantial lake-effect snow (approximately 92-102 inches annually citywide, over 120 inches along the eastern lakeshore) and real, documented high-water flooding in 2017 and 2019. Rochester's real tax picture is genuinely favorable on one specific, precisely verified point: while New York's graduated state income tax (3.9%-10.9% across 9 brackets, 2026) applies statewide, Rochester itself levies NO separate local income tax -- a real advantage over New York City and Yonkers -- though Monroe County's own effective property tax rate (approximately 2.79%) runs well above the national average. This record discloses Rochester's real, honest concentrated poverty (a citywide rate in the upper-20s percent, with one area -- 'The Crescent' -- exceeding 60% poverty, and severe child poverty around 42%) alongside a real, dramatic, and genuinely CONTINUING 2025-2026 crime-rate improvement (homicides down 76% year-over-year in Q1 2026 alone) -- treating Rochester's real single-employer-collapse-and-rebuild story and its real, unresolved economic challenges as simultaneously true.

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Housing

Median sale price$255,000

Taxes

Local effective property tax rate2.79%

Not independently sourced at the Monroe County level this session. New York's top state income tax rate is 10.90%. See the New York hub page for the statewide property tax context -- do not treat that figure as Rochester-specific.

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The tradeoffs

Pros

A real, genuine tax advantage specific to Rochester: New York's graduated state income tax applies, but Rochester itself levies zero local/city income tax, unlike New York City and Yonkers; comparatively affordable housing relative to most major US metros (Zillow average: $252,192), even amid real, sharp recent price appreciation; a real, current, and significant replacement economic anchor in the University of Rochester/UR Medicine (Monroe County's largest employer overall, ~27,000 employees) alongside RIT as a genuine second major university; a real, distinct, and currently thriving optics/photonics industry cluster (150+ firms, $3.2B+ annual output) that grew directly from the Kodak/Xerox engineering legacy; deep healthcare access anchored by Strong Memorial Hospital's Level One trauma center designation; real, genuine Lake Ontario waterfront access and Finger Lakes-region proximity; and a real, dramatic, and (unlike Cleveland's own 2026 stall documented elsewhere in this project) genuinely CONTINUING 2025-2026 crime-rate improvement, with Q1 2026 homicides down 76% year-over-year.

Cons

Rochester's city-proper population continues a real, ongoing decline (down ~2.8% since the 2020 Census, now roughly 62% of its 1950 peak), even as the broader 5-county metro has resumed modest growth since 2023; the city's real, dramatic Kodak-era employment collapse (from a ~62,000-person local peak to ~7,100 today) reshaped the local economy permanently, and broader MSA-level economic indicators remain soft (unemployment ~3.9-4.2%, median household income ~$46,587-$47,213, nonfarm payroll growth essentially flat); Monroe County's effective property tax rate (~2.79%) runs well above the national average; the city's real, honestly disclosed concentrated poverty runs severe in specific areas (over 60% poverty in 'The Crescent,' ~42% child poverty); RCSD's graduation rate (60%) runs meaningfully below New York's statewide rate (~85%); real, substantial Lake Ontario lake-effect snow (92-102+ inches annually) and documented 2017/2019 Lake Ontario flood events demand real preparation; and public transit is bus-only (RTS) with no rail-transit alternative since the city's subway closed in 1956.

Who this fits

Best for: Best fits movers who specifically value New York's real, precisely-verified zero-local-income-tax status in Rochester (a genuine exception relative to NYC and Yonkers), who want comparatively affordable housing relative to most major US metros while accepting real, current price appreciation, who want proximity to a genuine two-major-university market (University of Rochester and RIT) and a real, distinct, currently thriving optics/photonics career track, and who take the city's real, disclosed population, poverty, and school-performance challenges seriously -- while crediting the real, dramatic, and currently CONTINUING 2025-2026 crime-rate improvement rather than relying on an outdated reputation.

Maybe not for you if: Probably not the right fit for anyone who requires rail transit or a car-optional lifestyle, given Rochester's real, honest bus-only RTS system and the closure of its subway in 1956; anyone expecting Kodak or Xerox to still function at anything resembling their historic Rochester-area scale, given this record's precisely disclosed, dramatic decline and Xerox's own real headquarters relocation to Connecticut; anyone for whom New York's real, graduated top-bracket state income tax (up to 10.9%) is a hard disqualifier regardless of Rochester's own zero local-tax layer; anyone unwilling to budget for genuinely substantial Lake Ontario lake-effect winters (92-102+ inches of annual snowfall) or to confirm current flood-risk exposure for a lakefront property given the real, documented 2017 and 2019 high-water events; and anyone who would not weigh RCSD's real, disclosed graduation-rate gap (60% vs. New York's ~85% statewide) and the city's real, concentrated poverty honestly.

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Last reviewed: 2026-08-25. Independent research; see individual metric entries above for source attribution. This is not financial, tax, or legal advice -- confirm current figures with a local professional before making a decision.