Forget cities, Americans are heading to the burbs.
In late September, moveBuddha, a website dedicated to relocation, released its top suburbs to move to this fall, after discovering in its 2025 moving survey that one-third of Americans want to move to the ‘burbs this year. The team noted it wanted to source places where movers “might find more square footage, a sprawling yard, better schools, and ultimately, just more room to stretch out.” However, it added, not all suburbs are created equal.”
To determine the best spots to consider for a new suburban home, the team dug into its proprietary search data from its Moving Cost Calculator to find which suburbs are the most in-demand to move to this year.
“These top suburbs have the highest ratio of searches for moves in-to-out of cities across their metro area (and excluding the metro’s primary city),” the website explained. “Our final top dataset highlights 81 suburbs for which there was sufficient search data.”
After looking at all the stats, it named Wake Forest in North Carolina as the No. 1 spot.
“This once-rural outpost, including its charming, red-brick downtown, was once considered far from the hustle and bustle of ‘the Triangle,'” the findings stated. “That’s no longer the case. Wake Forest, located less than 12 miles outside of Raleigh, is building on a decade of popularity with the strongest inbound move interest of any suburb—2.64 inbound move searches for every searcher looking to exit.”
But with all this attention comes a downside: an increase in pricing. According to the website, the average house in Wake Forest now costs 58 percent more than the average house in North Carolina.
It’s followed closely by Eagle, Idaho, with an inbound ratio of 2.78, followed by Maryville, Tennessee, at 2.58. However, two states in particular dominated this list, with South Carolina and Texas each taking three posts.
“The popularity of South Carolina and Texas suburbs is part of a larger trend in which Southern states dominate in-move interest,” the findings stated. “Further, popular spots like Boerne, Texas, and Greer, South Carolina, sit near the edges of our 50-kilometer suburban cutoff, suggesting that movers may be seeking extra space, even as they stay within commuting range of a larger metro.”
While these are the hottest suburbs to move to right now, moveBuddha noted that they aren’t necessarily the most affordable. In fact, it created an entirely new list just for that, with Springfield, Ohio, coming out as the most affordable in the nation. Here, potential movers will find an average home price of just $187,200.
Ready to make a move to a smaller community? Check out all 81 of the suburbs the team analyzed at movebuddha.com.
