IRS migration data for filing years 2022 and 2023 recorded 1,510 tax-filing households moving from Virginia to Wake County, covering 2,498 individuals and $146.6 million in combined adjusted gross income — an average of $97,090 per return. Fairfax County alone sent 295 of those households, the second-largest single county of origin into Wake after Los Angeles. Because the IRS builds this series two to three years after a move happens, this describes 2022–2023, not today.
How many Northern Virginia households moved to Wake County?
1,510 tax returns, covering 2,498 individuals, moved from Virginia to Wake County in the 2022–2023 IRS filing-year window, reporting $146.6 million in combined adjusted gross income — an average of $97,090 per return. That confirms, in the underlying tax data rather than in anecdote, that a DC-to-Triangle move is a real and sizable pattern rather than a story that just gets repeated often.
For the county’s complete inbound and outbound picture across every state and North Carolina county, see Where Wake County Movers Come From. In that same window, Wake County gained 39,828 households from all sources and lost 35,985 — a net gain of 3,843 households and $363.6 million in adjusted gross income, with the entire net gain coming from out of state. Within North Carolina, Wake lost 3,149 households on net.
Which Virginia counties send the most filers, and how large is Fairfax’s share?
Fairfax County is, on its own, the second-largest single county-level origin recorded anywhere in the country for Wake County in this release — behind only Los Angeles County, California. The table below breaks out the counties named in this release; the IRS suppresses any county pair below 20 returns and folds those into an unranked residual, which is why the remainder of the Virginia total appears as a single line.
| Rank | Origin county | Returns in |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fairfax, VA | 295 |
| — | All other Virginia counties | 1,215 |
| Total | Virginia | 1,510 |
What carries over from a federal or contractor career to the Triangle?
The occupational shape of a Northern Virginia move — federal employment, defense and intelligence contracting, and the professional-services firms clustered around that work — has a real counterpart in the Triangle. Research Triangle Park hosts a comparable concentration of technology, life-sciences, and professional-services employers, and the Triangle’s broader professional labor market gives a federal or contractor employee leaving the DC area a plausible landing zone rather than a blank slate. None of that is visible in the IRS figures themselves, which record a county change and an income figure, not an employer or an industry — it is offered here as context, not as a data finding.
What doesn’t carry over — commuting, transit, and school assignment?
Three things about the move do not translate directly. Commute geometry is the first: Northern Virginia’s commute pattern is built around radial highways and a Metro system converging on DC, while the Triangle’s road network connects several employment centers — Raleigh, Cary, Durham, RTP — without a single dominant hub, so a commute that worked from one address in Fairfax does not map onto an equivalent address here. Transit is the second: there is no Metro-equivalent rail system serving Wake County, so a household used to commuting by rail should plan around driving or bus service instead. School assignment is the third and the one most often mishandled: the Wake County Public School System assigns students by attendance zone tied to the exact property address, not by town or ZIP code, so two houses on the same street can carry different assignments — see Wake County school assignment for how that mechanism works before assuming a neighborhood’s reputation tells you anything about a specific address.
Is this a one-way move, or does Wake send people back to Virginia?
It is a two-way flow rather than a one-directional exodus, and the same IRS release makes that visible. Across the period Wake County received 295 households from Fairfax County and sent 149 the other way — a net gain to Wake of 146 households. The return flow is real and worth knowing about: roughly one household moved from Wake to Fairfax for every two that came the other direction. Anyone treating this as a one-way migration should understand that a meaningful number of people make the move back.
How current is this data?
Not current in the way a listing or a closing report is current. The IRS builds this series by matching Social Security numbers across two consecutive years of filed returns, then publishes the result roughly two to three years after the moves themselves happened. The 2022–2023 release reflects address changes made between a 2022 return and a 2023 return — every figure on this page describes that window specifically, not conditions today.
What can’t this data tell you?
Four limits apply here as much as anywhere else in this series. It is county-level only — there is no ZIP code, neighborhood, or subdivision detail in this IRS release, so nothing here can say which part of Wake County Northern Virginia filers moved into. County pairs below 20 returns are suppressed and grouped into an unranked residual, understating small flows. Adjusted gross income reflects the return filed for the destination year, not income at the moment of the move. And this is filers, not people generally — a household that does not file a federal return, or that moves without an income change prompting one, may not register the same way here.
Who should not rely on this page?
Anyone pricing a specific Cary or Triangle address should not use this page for that — it has no data below the county level. Anyone assuming this is a one-way departure from Northern Virginia should not skip the return-flow figures above; Fairfax’s net position runs the other way. And anyone wanting a stated reason for why federal and contractor households move on this particular pattern should look elsewhere — the IRS data records a county change and an income figure, not an employer, an industry, or a motive.
For a Cary-specific starting point, see the Cary overview. For where to live relative to Research Triangle Park specifically, see RTP: Where to Live. For general relocation guidance, see Triangle relocation guidance, and for the full county-level migration picture behind these numbers, see Where Wake County Movers Come From.
Moving here from somewhere else
- Moving from Florida to North Carolina: What the Data Shows
- Moving from New York to North Carolina: What the Data Shows
- Moving from California to North Carolina: What the IRS Migration Data Shows
- Cary, NC Commute Distances and Routes to RTP, Raleigh, and RDU
- Things to Do in Cary, NC
About the author
Cameron Smith writes Move Up NC’s real estate guidance for Cary, Morrisville and the North Carolina Triangle.
Editorial note: This article summarises published migration data and general relocation considerations. It does not rank places or provide legal, tax or Fair Housing advice.