In a 2022 study, SmartAsset analyzed metrics for nearly 500 suburbs located within an hour’s drive of a large city. Four Indianapolis suburbs made the Top-10, with Noblesville ranking #4 (second amongst Indianapolis suburbs). The metrics were analyzed across three categories: jobs, affordability, and livability.
Overall, the Midwest performed very well in SmartAsset’s study. Nearly 30% of all suburbs surveyed were Midwestern, with 31 of them ranking in the Top 50. In fact, each of the top 10 suburbs is located in the Midwest, with nearly half located in Indiana.
The three categories used for analysis were jobs (median household income, five-year growth in income, 10-year growth in employment, job diversity, and unemployment rate), affordability (housing costs as a percent of income, home value-to-income ratio, average effective property tax rate and estimated annual cost of living for an individual), and livability (high school graduation rate, dining and entertainment as a percent of all establishments and violent & property crime rates). Suburbs were scored on a scale of 0-100 in each category and ranked by cumulative score.
All four Top-10 Indianapolis suburbs ranked highest in the jobs category, with Noblesville ranked second behind only Brownsburg. According to the study, the four suburbs have unemployment rates of 2.5% or less and 10-year employment growth rates exceeding 25%.
Noblesville landed at #4 best suburb to live in near a large city out of 494 suburbs surveyed with a jobs score of 90.60, an affordability score of 65.71, and a livability score of 79.22
Check out SmartAsset’s full study, including the top-ranked suburbs in each region of the country and the complete list of Best Suburbs to Live in Near a Large City.
