Ah, the link to the Money magazine article was to a poll. It wasn’t a ranking of cities, but a selection screen for ranking them.
While I don’t place a whole lot of faith in polls, if you’ll click the “Show Results” tab on the poll, San Diego is currently ranked #1.
San Diego median household income is ~67K (I believe that was the 2006 figure, so may be a little higher now, I’ve seen 72K thrown around before for a more recent figure). However, So Cal in general is (and always has been) highly concentrated with permanent renters – San Diego, LA, and other coastal cities here have always had a premium to buy (though not nearly as bad as the recent bubble). SD/LA is basically 50/50 renter/owner households. If you back the median renter household income (~43K) out of the median household income, San Diego has a median homeowners household income of just about 95K/yr. Just a few more data points, but it does support a somewhat higher home valuation than, for example, a midwest city with a 66/33 homeowner/renter median.
