A New Study Predicts the Top 13 Places Where Amazon Could Build Its New Headquarters

In September, Amazon announced that it would invest $5 billion in developing its next headquarters and wanted cities to fight one another for a chance to host what would be called HQ2. And fight they have.

Cities have offered increasingly outlandish things to try to lure Amazon. Stonecrest, Ga., has offered to rename itself Amazon, while several Missouri cities said they would build a Hyperloop to connect several of the state's largest metro areas.

Whichever city the ecommerce giant chooses could see a huge impact on its job growth, tax income, infrastructure development, quality of life and more. It's why Newark, N.J., has offered $7 billion in tax incentives over the next 10 years to host HQ2.

The hunt for HQ2 has led many to speculate on which city would win. The New York Times, Moody's, CNN, CNBC and more have all published predictions. To make sense of it all, Sperling's BestPlaces, a website designed to help users find out where to live next, combined the predictions from 18 sources.

Sperling's averaged the rankings of all those predictions to come up with a meta-ranking of sorts. The average ranking of each of Sperling's top cities, along with notable sources that gave the city a top ranking, are listed in the slides that follow. Sperling's prediction for the final HQ2 destination is listed last.

It's worth noting that not all of the predictions that Sterling's studied were formatted the same. Some, like CNN Money's ranking, had more than one first-place finisher.

San Jose, Calif.

Average rank: 34.8

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money

Data compiled by Sperling's

Toronto, Canada

Average rank: 34.5

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, GeekWire

Data compiled by Sperling's

Pittsburgh, Penn.

Average rank: 32.2

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, Venture Beat, New York Times Common Sense

Data compiled by Sperling's

Raleigh, N.C.

Average rank: 31.6

Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Opinion, Denver News Tribune

Data compiled by Sperling's

New York, N.Y.

Average rank: 29.3

Notable first-place finishes: CNBC, Anderson Economic Group

Data compiled by Sperling's

Denver, Colo.

Average rank: 28.3

Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Upshot

Data compiled by Sperling's

Dallas, Texas

Average rank: 27.7

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money, CityLab

Data compiled by Sperling's

Austin, Texas

Average rank: 26.6

Notable first-place finishes: Moody's, CNN Money, Venture Beat

Data compiled by Sperling's

Washington, D.C.

Average rank: 26.5

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money

Data compiled by Sperling's

Philadelphia, Penn.

Average rank: 25.8

Notable first-place finishes: Slate, CityLab

Data compiled by Sperling's

Chicago, Ill.

Average rank: 21.7

Notable first-place finishes: Slate, CityLab

Data compiled by Sperling's

Boston, Mass.

Average rank: 17.2

Notable first-place finishes: CNN Money

Data compiled by Sperling's

Atlanta, Ga.

Average rank: 13.6

Notable first-place finishes: New York Times Opinion, CNN Money

Data compiled by Sperling's