A new report from Redfin reveals the most in-demand neighborhoods across the United States.

Redfin ranked U.S. ZIP codes in the 150 most populous metro areas using year-over-year growth in listing views on Redfin.com and a Redfin Compete Score — a measure of how hard it is to win a home in a specific area. The area is then rated on a scale of 0 to 100, where 100 is the most competitive.

Five of the hottest neighborhoods of 2025 are Midwest suburbs.

“People are seeking out neighborhoods that have access to city amenities through transit or nearby job opportunities, but they also want that suburban, small town charm,” Daryl Fairweather, Redfin Chief Economist, tells CNBC Make It.

“The South has been the desirable place in previous years because it’s more affordable on the coast, but insurance costs and property taxes have gone up. The Midwest, however, has stable insurance costs, stable property taxes and a stable housing market.”

The report used 2025 data from January 1 to February 28, with year-over-year data compared against the same timeframe in 2024. To rank on Redfin’s final list, a ZIP code had to have over 50 home sales and a Redfin Compete Score above 50. The ZIP codes on the list may include more than one neighborhood, town or village, and the report uses the neighborhood names that represent the area covered.

In each of the top 10 hottest neighborhoods, homes are selling quicker now than they did a year ago. Six of the 10 have a lack homes for sale and saw a drop in active listings from a year ago.

“It reflects strong demand. When there are more buyers, and there are sellers, homes sell quicker,” Fairweather says.

ZIP code: 11238

Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights-Clinton Hill area ranked number one, with a 105% spike in home sales from a year ago.

The median sale in the neighborhood is $1,397,000, which is up 3.9% year over year, according to Redfin.

“Prospect Heights being No. 1 speaks to how desirable it now is to be in proximity to a strong labor market like in New York, but it’s still Brooklyn,” Fairweather says. “It’s a bit more suburban than Manhattan. I think people are looking for that balance of having job opportunities, especially with return to the office, but still wanting more space.”

Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill offer a small-town charm in the middle of central Brooklyn, with a mix of new buildings and gorgeous old brownstones.

The area is home to the Brooklyn Museum and just a short walk to Prospect Park, the second-largest park in Brooklyn.

1. Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2. Jenison, Mich.
3. Campton Hills and St. Charles, Ill.
4. Fairport, N.Y.
5. Polk Gulch and Russian Hill, Calif.
6. Great Kills, Staten Island, N.Y.
7. Franklin, Wis.
8. Prairie Village and Mission Hills, Kan.
9. Lakeville, Minn.
10. Bowie, Md.

Jenison, Michigan — ZIP code 49428 — is the the second-hottest U.S. neighborhood. The median sale price in the area was $356,500, which was down 0.2% year over year.

Fairweather says Jenison ranked No. 2 because of its affordability.

“The Midwest, in general, has been stronger this year because it is one of the few parts of the country that remains affordable,” she says. “Even given these high mortgage rates, a middle-class family can afford home ownership.”

Jenison, Michigan, is a suburb of Grand Rapids. It is less than 15 minutes from the city’s downtown and less than 30 minutes away from Lake Michigan.

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In 2017, Sophie Hilaire graduated from The Wharton School with an MBA in Operations and moved to New York City to work as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Before all of that, she was a Captain in the U.S. Army for six years.

“I grew up in the middle of nowhere Ohio, so to me, living in the city was a rite of passage,” she tells CNBC Make It. “It was great but I also felt like during the time I lived there, I was basically kind of a tourist.”

After a year of constant travel for work and spending only the weekends in her NYC apartment, Hilaire decided to take on a much different kind of challenge — climbing Mount Everest.

Hilaire already had experience climbing mountains like Mount McKinley in Alaska, Cotopaxi in the Andes Mountains and Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador.

She started training while still working full-time. When it came time for the climb, Hilaire was able to take advantage of the months-long sabbatical program offered at McKinsey.

“At the surface, I’ve always been drawn to lofty goals — ones that stretch the body and the spirit. I wanted to find out what would happen if I shut my laptop for two months and focused on this sole, raw experience while living in nature,” Hilaire says.

“When I did that, I had this epiphany that I wanted to spend more time in nature and Central Park to me wasn’t really the level of nature I needed.”

Hilaire returned from Nepal in the summer of 2019 and decided not to renew her lease.

“On the plane ride home, I knew I couldn’t go back to life in New York and that I had to be closer to nature,” she says. “That moment of knowing launched the next chapter — van life, homesteading, and loving myself. The mountain did transform me. She gave me direction and that’s been the real gift.”

Her job allowed Hilaire to be anywhere, so long as she was able to fly out to meet with clients around the country. That gave Hilaire flexibility to travel. But then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and Hilaire found herself without a home and without a clue of where she wanted to head to next.

“I thought, ‘I’m not ready to pay rent or buy a house, so why don’t I move into a sprinter van and continue to visit different places and see where I want to land?’” Hilaire says.

“I always knew I wanted to get a van just to have, but this kind of felt like a no-regrets move because I thought, ‘Why don’t I just get it now, so I don’t have to pay rent anywhere and I can keep on traveling?’ I didn’t know how long the pandemic was going to last.”

Hilaire purchased a Sprinter van she found on Craigslist for $29,900, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The van had been partially built out already but still needed a lot of work. Hilaire added a bedroom area, bathroom, IKEA cabinets, solar panels, and a desk. She did most of the work herself and estimates she spent about $18,500 in renovations.

Hilaire traveled all across the United States while living and continuing to work full-time as a consultant.

Hilaire eventually quit her job at McKinsey & Company and lived the van life full-time for two years. But, in 2022, she decided it was time to settle down.

As a first step, Hilaire switched to boutique consulting which meant she wasn’t as client-facing and didn’t need to travel for work. She went from making around $300,000 a year at McKinsey, not including bonuses, to making significantly less — under $100,000. Hilaire says it didn’t bother her.

“I wanted to have my own trees and have somewhere to experience four seasons. I wanted to have a garden. I wanted to be grounded and I wanted to build a life with someone, too,” she says. “It was really nice because I got to spend all that time with myself and develop a relationship with myself for the first time.”

Next, Hilaire had to decide where she wanted to set down some roots. She thought about a homestead — a house, usually a farmhouse, with separate buildings on a big piece of land. Hilaire says she wanted a homestead to “learn more about self-reliance and just be connected to a piece of land,” but she wasn’t prepared to buy one just yet.

At the same time, her friends had been trying to convince her to move to Kentucky. The family owns a hunting property about an hour from their house where Hilaire could stay. The land was big enough for Hilaire to park her van, and she’d have free rein of the 16×40-foot Tuff Shed they bought from Home Depot for $23,000.

“I drove over there in my van and I was blown away by this place. I saw it probably at the worst time because it was the end of winter but I saw how beautiful it was,” Hilaire says.

Hilaire decided to stay and says it was the perfect situation because it would give her the ability to save to buy her own land one day. She set her sights on transforming the Tuff Shed into a tiny home that her friends could use even after she was gone.

“Huge houses did not appeal to me after living in my van. It just felt more comfortable to me and reasonable to have a smaller space,” she says.

The shed had two lofts, outside walls and subflooring and was being used to store random hunting items. Hilaire got to work renovating in the summer of 2022.

Hilaire says she spent roughly $53,535 transforming the shed into a living space inspired by the Sea Ranch community in California, an unincorporated community known for its timber-frame structures. She added skylights, a kitchen, open closets, several decks, a bathroom, a utility closet, and a bed with cardboard boxes underneath for storage.

Hilaire says her first night in the shed was quiet and restorative.

“It was exciting but it was also so relaxing and just really peaceful,” she says. “It was just so nice being in complete silence.”

Hilaire spent a year renovating the shed and lived there for five months before she moved to a homestead she owns with her now-husband.

“In some ways, it’s sad, but in other ways, it was a beautiful thing. That shed took me exactly where I wanted to go,” she says. “I didn’t want to be in this shed forever.”

When the Army vet first met her now husband, some of their dates included working on the shed’s renovations.

“It was important for me while we were dating to see if we could work together on projects. I wanted someone who didn’t necessarily need to be so great at it but we should have fun doing it,” Hilaire says. “We quickly realized that we found the one.”

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From rising clothing and food prices to unexpected car repairs, everyday expenses are creeping up — and the prospect of government-imposed tariffs aren’t helping. Add in a rocky stock market and a few losses in my retirement accounts, and it would be really easy to panic. But I haven’t … yet.

I’ve paid off $300,000 of debt, and as an elder millennial, I have weathered recessions and economic storms before. What’s helped me the most is not overreacting out of fear. 

Instead, I try my best to make calm, clear decisions based on what matters most to me — and what I want my money to do for me. Here’s what I’m doing with my money right now:

Even though things are getting more expensive, I’m still spending money — I’m just not wasting it. For example, I’m a fashionista, but I haven’t bought any new clothes this year, and I don’t plan to anytime soon.

I’m getting creative with what I already own, thanks to what I call the ”$1 rule”: If I’ve worn it as many days as every dollar I paid for it, it’s a keeper. Otherwise, it’s time to repurpose it (think jeans into cutoffs) or donate it.

Instead of throwing money at “convenience inflation” — impulse buys, random Amazon finds or dupes that don’t last, I’m redirecting those funds toward what truly supports my health and happiness: nutritious food, better sleep, and time-saving services that keep my stress low.

DON’T MISS: How to change careers and be happier at work

I am saying yes to buying things I use every day, like my favorite health supplements and imported items I know will see a price hike (hello, matcha!). As an Asian American, I’m especially aware that many of my household staples are imported, and I’m stocking up now ahead of potential price spikes.

One of my clients is a therapist, and she’s already seeing patients drop off because of fears around job loss. I encourage my clients to keep therapy in the budget, especially now, by cutting what’s not essential so they can keep what is. Emotional support is just as important as financial planning when things feel uncertain.

I’m not hoarding cash out of fear, but I am building in a little more flexibility.

I’m slightly increasing my cash reserves to prep for higher costs in essentials — especially groceries, clothing, and car repairs. I even have a little “car-buffer fund” now, just in case auto part tariffs sneak up on me.

I still keep six months of emergency expenses in a high-yield savings account, but that’s because I’m debt-free, a lifestyle choice that has served me well in the last two recessions.

For my clients who still carry credit card debt, I’m urging them to pay that off now. If the interest rate is 20% and prices on goods go up another 20%, that’s a recipe for cash flow chaos, even if your spending habits stay the same. Paying down credit card debt is saving 20% that would have gone to the credit card company instead of staying in your pocket.

One easy shift that’s helping me and my clients: pay your credit card weekly instead of monthly. It helps catch price creep in real time. Paying your credit card bills on a monthly basis means you’re still paying for purchases from up to 30 days ago.

Yes, I’ve looked at my retirement account recently — and yes, it stung. Watching something I’ve worked so hard for drop in value because of man-made economic decisions is frustrating.

But I’m not pulling my money out. I’ve done the panic withdrawal in the past, and I regretted it.

I’m still maxing out my 401(k), IRA, and Flexible Spending Account and sticking to my plan with dollar-cost averaging. I’m not putting extra into my brokerage right now, and this particular downturn in the stock market sped me up to what I knew I had to do all along: diversify. 

We often mistake having multiple stocks as diversification, but as we saw recently, many stocks tend to move in the same direction, so it’s important to look at the asset classes you are invested in. 

I’m not withdrawing a dime of my retirement, and you shouldn’t either unless you are prepared to pay the extra taxes and penalties. But I am shifting away from companies that don’t align with my values within my retirement accounts. To me, investing isn’t just about returns — it’s about what kind of world you want to build.

This is the advice I’ve shared with my money coaching clients lately: manage your money as though the recession is already here. If I’ve learned anything from the last two decades, it’s that uncertainty isn’t going anywhere.

I’ve stopped waiting for the “perfect” economy to make decisions. Instead of doom scrolling, use this time to refine your budget, double down on stacking cash and paying down debt, and stay vigilant of your present progress, rather than trying to predict the future.

Bernadette Joy is the author of ”CRUSH Your Money Goals″ and a personal finance expert and investor dedicated to helping you beat burnout and reach financial independence. You can find her on Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Do you want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Start today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

In a lot of ways, living on Martha’s Vineyard is like what you see on “Dawson’s Creek” or “The Summer I Turned Pretty” — think summer romances, beach bonfires, cute boutiques and coffee shops on every corner.

“You’re kind of just living in this movie life,” says Tyla Packish, 23, who grew up on the island and lives in her hometown of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts.

What you don’t see is what life is like when the last tourists head home after Labor Day. “Living here year-round is definitely an interesting experience because you go from the summer being extremely packed and full of life, to the winter being dead and with no one around,” Packish tells CNBC Make It.

Many shops and restaurants close up after the season and basic goods tend to cost more. For example, gas can be $1 to $2 more per gallon, sometimes more, on the island than on the mainland, she says.

For all its positives and negatives, Martha’s Vineyard is home and where Packish works remotely in advertising and social media, earning $85,000 a year. Here’s what her life and budget look like living on the island.

About 20,600 people call Martha’s Vineyard home year-round; during the summer season between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the population can swell to over 94,000.

In her free time, Packish goes to the beach with friends, all of whom she’s known since childhood. She also spends time on the island with her dad, mom, stepdad and two younger sisters, “and then I have probably a million cousins running around.”

She says her family has lived on Martha’s Vineyard for multiple generations, going back to at least her great grandparents, and many of them stayed on the island to work in the trades and raise their families.

Her dad is an entrepreneur in real estate, while her mom owns a house cleaning business and her stepdad is a boat mechanic.

There are a few myths about Martha’s Vineyard that Packish says aren’t true, like that everyone who lives there is “super wealthy and owns a mansion.”

“Really, it’s a bunch of normal people with rich people that visit sometimes,” she says. Not to say that there aren’t some wealthy islanders, Packish says, but many residents she knows are working class.

Martha’s Vineyard has “all the standard businesses that you would see anywhere, like boutiques, coffee shops, banks [and] grocery stores,” Packish says. “But we don’t have any of the big chains. So we don’t have malls, we don’t have more affordable options. We just have [locally] owned family businesses.”

The island also has most of the services people need, like doctors, though they’re scarce and often book up far in advance. When something isn’t available on Martha’s Vineyard, islanders must take the ferry to the mainland of Massachusetts.

For Packish, that means a recent trip to the eye doctor was a five-hour ordeal involving a ferry trip, rideshares and a lot of waiting around. When she goes on vacation, she leaves home five hours ahead of her flight because it can take up to three hours just to get to the airport.

She typically leaves the island once a month, but can go for stretches of several months at a time.

“My whole life outside of the island revolves around trying to get on the ferry and making sure that everything aligns with the boat schedule,” she says.

Here’s how Packish spent her money in February 2025.

• Retirement savings: $1,583 toward a Roth 401(k) and a Roth IRA
• Discretionary: $705 for travel, clothes, home goods and an eye doctor appointment
• Food: $551 for groceries and dining out
• Car insurance: $159
• Transportation: $153 for gas, rideshares and ferry tickets
• Subscriptions: $69 for Apple iCloud storage, Google storage, Netflix, magazines, Spotify and Quickbooks

Packish previously worked in social media marketing and recently switched companies to work for an advertising agency; all told, she’ll earn about $67,000 from her full-time job this year.

In 2022, during her sophomore year of college, she started a side hustle doing social media management and consulting for businesses on Martha’s Vineyard. She takes on about five to eight clients per season, from restaurants to retailers, and spends between 10 to 50 hours per week on her business depending on the time of the season.

She brought in about $18,000 from her side hustle last year.

For a few months during this year’s offseason, Packish lived rent-free in a one-bedroom apartment that her father owns that was vacant. She’ll return to living with her family once summer visitors arrive. Otherwise, “I wouldn’t be able to live on Martha’s Vineyard with my salary,” she says.

In the absence of paying for rent, Packish focuses on super-charging her retirement savings. She made $1,583 in contributions for the month; last year, she put $7,000 into a Roth IRA saved over $10,000 in a 401(k).

Given her low living expenses, “I figured, why not start early?” she says. “And then when there are years where I’m learning how to pay rent and budget and things like that, I don’t have to worry about my retirement or saving.”

She also keeps her shopping and food spending in check, though the price of basic goods, from groceries to clothes, are often more expensive on the island. She supplements her in-person shopping with trips to the mainland of Massachusetts to shop now and then, plus shopping online for more variety and lower prices.

Packish’s February spend was higher than usual because she paid for a flight, Airbnb and bus tickets for an upcoming trip to San Antonio, Texas.

After attending college in Savannah, Georgia, Packish moved back home to Martha’s Vineyard in 2024 in order to save money and plan her next move off the island.

As far as dealing with summer visitors, “I personally love having all the tourists come and visit because they do boost our economy,” she says. “Martha’s Vineyard wouldn’t be what it is without the tourists, and it just makes for a fun season.”

While residents are typically families or older adults, Packish says the year-round Martha’s Vineyard lifestyle might be good for those who enjoy a quieter life.

“It’s a lot of fun having a very simple life that I don’t really have to worry or stress about anything,” she says. “I just really like how calm and relaxed my life is here.”

That said, Packish doesn’t see herself living on the island forever.

In August, she’ll move to Los Angeles for her new job. She’ll finish one last season with her side hustle clients before recommending them to a friend of hers who owns a digital marketing agency.

“I’ve got to spread my wings and try to learn somewhere new,” Packish says. “I could see myself maybe coming back here when I’m older, maybe to raise a family.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify gas price disparities on the island and that Packish takes the ferry to mainland Massachusetts to shop.

What’s your budget breakdown? Share your story with us for a chance to be featured in a future installment.

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For many adults, becoming a parent is all-consuming. Familial obligations monopolize your attention and even the strongest, most long-term friendships can feel strained.

Ironically, those deep friendships we have in adulthood, the ones that take a backseat to family, are crucial contributing factors to raising resilient kids, journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace said in a recent Ted Talk.

“A child’s resilience is rooted in the resilience of the adults in their lives,” she said. “Adult resilience is rooted on the depth and support in our relationships.”

Wallace authored “Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It” and the forthcoming “Mattering in the Modern World: A Solution to the Crises of our Time.”

A child witnessing you support a friend, or vice versa, shows them that part of resilience is creating a network where it’s OK to ask for help.

Wallace’s advice touches on a haunting reality about adult friendships: Americans have less of them than they’d like.

Less that one-third of adults ages 30 to 49 say they have five or more close friends, according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center. And in a 2023 University of Michigan poll, 34% of adults ages 50 to 80 say they feel isolated.

And it’s not just the quantity of positive social connections that’s lacking, it’s the quality: 40% of American adults said they are not as close with their friends as they would like, according to a recent PLUS ONE study.

When journalist Olga Khazan was deciding to have a child, one of her biggest concerns was how antisocial she was.

As an introvert, she often turned inward and stayed home rather than putting in the work to maintain relationships in the real world, an experience she outlines in her book “Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change.”

“Being a parent just requires being ‘on’ all the time,” Khazan told CNBC Make It. “You kind of have to learn to be okay with being really active and socially engaged, even in a nonverbal way, a lot more than you’re used to.”

To prepare her for parenthood she wanted to increase her extroversion. She found that the most successful strategy for doing so was signing up for improv and sailing classes.

“I think the most effective thing is to sign up for an activity that occurs regularly with the same group of people,” she said. “It is hard to back out of because other people are relying on you.”

Though sailing was expensive and started much earlier in the morning than she preferred, the social interactions that came with showing up did improve her quality of life.

“You’re working on something, or thinking about something, and someone else in the boat will have had that exact experience and can really shed light on it,” she says.

Forcing herself to do things even when she didn’t feel like it made her less cranky and more agreeable while parenting. And being more comfortable talking to others about the challenges of child-rearing made the experience a bit less lonely.

“I am just not really a joiner naturally,” she says. “I never joined a group before this, but I think I learned that things like this, especially really hard things like motherhood, are so much easier when you have other people around going through something similar.”

Despite the proven benefits positive social relationships have on our well-being, American culture still doesn’t rank friendships as highly as romantic partnerships.

The only way to change this, Wallace said, is to actively prioritize friendships.

“We need one or two or three people in our lives who know us intimately. who can see when we are struggling and who will reach over and put that oxygen mask on for us,” she said. “This is a very different level of support than we normalize in our busy culture today.”

Do you want a new career that’s higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC’s new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Pre-register today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

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