Get ready to roll out the welcome mat, Seattle. Despite a troubled housing market, high costs of living, and rumors of endless rain and the Seattle Freeze, a large number of Americans want to move to the Emerald City. A recent survey asked Americans where they’d most like to live in the country, and Seattle ranked at the top of the list.
Read on for all the details!
Global marketing and branding firm Resonance asked around 2,000 people to name the three U.S. cities they’d like to live in one day. Seattle was ranked overall as the fifth most desirable city to live in. It also had high scores in specific categories: it ranked number two for air quality and number three for GDP per capita.
Seattle is described by Resonance as an “understated West Coast urban wonderland.” In their rundown of Seattle’s most recent wins, Resonance cited the newly-opened Overlook Walk on the waterfront, a surge of new downtown businesses and hotels, the expansion of the Link Light Rail and Concourse C at Sea-Tac Airport, soaring tourism, and ongoing tech industry expansion.
They also noted that Seattle’s median home value is $887,994—great for real estate investors but disheartening for the average home buyer in the area. Meanwhile, newly-built apartments in Seattle are the smallest in the country. Resonance acknowledged the city’s high cost of living, adding: “Now if [Seattle] can only keep the cost of entry reasonable.”
It’s also worth noting that this was an open-ended survey with results that reflect “cities’ perception and image,” as Axios put it, rather than a ranking based on hard metrics and census data. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Seattle was in the top 10 cities with the largest numeric increase in population between 2023 and 2024—but the fastest-growing cities in that time frame were mostly in southern states like Texas and Florida.
The four cities that ranked above Seattle were New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. Check out the full top-10 ranking below:
- New York, NY
- Los Angeles, CA
- Chicago, IL
- San Francisco, CA
- Seattle, WA
- Miami, FL
- Boston, MA
- Washington, DC
- Las Vegas, NV
- San Diego, CA
A total of 100 U.S. cities were ranked. To see the rest of the list and read the full report, you can view the Best Cities ranking here.