CA's Top 5 Ranking For Best U.S. Place To Move To

CALIFORNIA — The Golden State scored high on a new list of the best places to move to in the United States.

According to a survey by This Old House, 82 percent of Americans were interested in a fresh start, with many considering a move to achieve this. For people looking to re-establish themselves in a new place, the beginning of a new year is often a good time.

Since there are a host of different motivations that may cause someone to move, the team at Viewhomes gathered the six most important metrics to come up with the best and worst states to move to this year.

“We chose to look at a host of attributes to measure when determining the best places for a fresh start in the US," said Liam Cope, a real estate and relocation expert with Viewhomes. "For a lot of people, economic freedom is one of the primary motivators, so we looked at the cost of living, job opportunities, and economic data. Other factors like crime rates, quality of life, and social connectivity make a big difference when choosing where to move to, so we included those."

The high number of job opportunities in California, coupled with great economic indicators, put the state in second place behind New York.

Top 10 States For A Fresh Start In 2025

1. New York
2. California
3. Texas
4. Florida
5. Tennessee
6. Illinois
7. Pennsylvania
8. Iowa
9. Colorado
10. Ohio

See the full list of states embedded below:

Data Sources, Methodology Used For List

• Cost of Living was sourced from the Cost of Living Index
• Job Opportunities was sourced from LinkedIn. Job listings were collected by filtering results for each state to determine the total number of opportunities.
• Crime Rates we sourced from FBI Crime Data. The dataset covers three crime categories (Crimes Against Society, Crimes Against Property and Crimes Against Persons). The total number of crimes across all categories was divided by each state’s population to calculate the crime rate as a percentage.
• Quality of Life was sourced from the Quality of Life by State index. To determine quality of life in each state, sources evaluated each state across 51 indicators, ranging from housing costs and income growth to the education rate and quality of hospitals. These are grouped into five major categories: affordability, economy, education and health, quality of life, and safety. Higher score means a better quality of life.
• For Economic Data we used the GDP by State (Gross Domestic Product by State and Personal Income by State, 2nd Quarter 2024)
• Social Connectivity / Loneliness we used the Map from Census Bureau showing the Percentage of Americans who feel lonely at least sometimes by state

The Viewhomes team is a part of Nu-Vista Premiere Realty Inc., offering experienced and professional real estate advice to those looking to sell their homes.