In a tough year for home sellers, the Midwest was a bright spot.
Six of the 10 most popular markets for buyers this year were in the heartland, continuing a multi-year trend, according to a new analysis from Zillow.
Rockford, Illinois — a city of about 150,000, 90 minutes northwest of Chicago — was the most popular place to buy a home in 2025, Zillow found. That’s after it was the second-most popular place for homebuyers in 2024. Midsize Midwestern cities dominated the charts: Dearborn, Michigan; Carmel and South Bend, Indiana; Toledo, Ohio; and Springfield, Illinois, also made the top 10.
Zillow measured popularity by analyzing a few metrics, including how many people viewed homes online, how much home values rose, and how fast homes sold.
The most popular places for home shoppers have a few common traits: They’re mostly midsize cities; they’re relatively affordable, with typical home prices under $350,000; and they’re in proximity to lots of jobs.
“Affordability has been the defining story of the housing market over the past few years,” said Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow. “Much of the Midwest was relatively affordable before the pandemic, and remains so after, even as many other markets saw sky-high price growth.”
Andrew Blevins, 35, told Business Insider’s Jacob Zinkula that he and his wife chose to move to Rockford and buy their first home in 2020, after both lost their jobs when the pandemic hit. The rent for their one-bedroom apartment in New York City was about the same as the monthly mortgage payment for their three-bedroom house in Illinois.
Blevins is part of a wave of transplants to the Midwest — a trend that’s likely to continue, according to Zillow’s data. More than 60% of Zillow page views on homes in Rockford — and a majority of views for the most popular Midwestern cities — came from outside the metro area.
While some Midwestern downtowns have struggled to combat an urban “doom loop” and bring residents and workers back, many suburban communities are thriving. Places like Dearborn and Carmel are popular suburbs of major cities and job hubs — Detroit and Indianapolis, respectively.
These communities tend to cater to families, offering strong schools and a more affordable cost of living compared to many of their coastal city counterparts.
“Buyers have been willing to look a bit farther out from major cities to find a more affordable area, especially in an area where they won’t need to sacrifice on opportunity or lifestyle,” Divounguy said. “A lot of Midwest cities check those boxes.”
Carmel, for example, has nearly doubled in population to over 100,000 residents over the last quarter century, but it’s still a safe, affordable, and attractive place to raise a family.
Patrick Walters, a resident of Carmel for two decades, is a Colorado native, but loved raising his family in the Indiana community. And all four of Walters’ kids, who are in their 20s and early 30s, live nearby. His two oldest recently bought their own homes in the Indianapolis suburbs.
“If somebody had told me years ago that I’d be living in Indiana, I would have thought they were crazy,” Walters told Business Insider earlier this year. “But this is by far the nicest place we’ve ever lived.”
Zillow’s ranking reflects a broader trend: the Midwest and Northeast are experiencing booming demand, while demand in the Sunbelt is slowing. Some Midwestern and Northeastern states have begun to lose fewer people than they did before the pandemic, and a few have even gained population.
Just before the pandemic, Missouri and Wisconsin were experiencing net population losses, but now they’re growing, a March paper from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found. Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan have seen their outflows slow post-pandemic. In the Northeast, Connecticut has also seen outward migration slow.
