Bring on the waterworks: The stress of moving brings plenty of us to tears

By Dan Rafter, Editor

Regrets? They’re surprisingly common among people who have moved, at least according to the latest research from real estate data company Clever. And some people are so stressed that they can’t help but burst into tears.

According to Clever’s survey, 36% of respondents who moved in 2022 told Clever that they had regrets about the move, with 20% wishing they had never moved at all. A total of 20% said they wished they had moved to a larger home. Clever found that 15% of respondents did not like their new home.

Clever surveyed 1,000 Americans on their experiences with moving in the past year. The company also analyzed migration numbers to highlight where people are moving to and where they are moving from.

A high number of respondents -- 33% -also told Clever that they experienced a high level of stress during the move, and a surprisingly high 44% of respondents said that they cried at least once during the moving process.

This stress isn’t surprising. Preparing for a move takes a lot of work. It’s expensive, too. Maybe that’s why 37% of participants in Clever’s survey said that they rented a truck instead of hiring more costly professional movers. The survey found that 26% of respondents hired professional movers while 31% chose to simply ask friends and family members to help them move boxes to and from a vehicle or storage pod.

Those are just some of the statistics released by Clever. The company also pointed out that the most popular moving destination in 2022 was Florida, while the state that people most often moved away from was California. Texas was a popular destination, too, ranking as the second most popular state for people on the move in 2023.

Illinois made Clever’s report, too, ranking as the state with the third largest number of people moving out.

A total of 61% of respondents moved fewer than 20 miles away from their previous home. This isn’t surprising: 53% of survey participants said that they didn’t think this was a good time to move across the country, most likely because of the high cost of cross-country moves.

This doesn’t mean that all Americans are opposed to making big moves. A total of 12% of survey respondents said that they moved more than 100 miles away from their previous homes last year.

Clever found that 25% of survey participants moved from cities to suburbs while 31% of rural residents moved to suburban areas. A total of 40% of respondents told Clever that they would prefer to live in a city if money were no object.

And why did people move last year? Clever reported that 24% of survey respondents said they moved to boost their quality of life, while 23% sought a lower cost of living or lower home prices. Another 22% of respondents said that they were upsizing, moving to a bigger home. A total of 21% of respondents said that they moved because they wanted to live closer to friends or family members.