Managing population fluctuations, both local and city-wide, is one of the biggest challenges of Banished. But with the right technique, it isn't one which can't be overcome.
When you need some household to migrate to another location, build a new house for them in the new location and just before the new house is finished, order their old house to get removed. They will then become homeless and migrate to the new house the moment it is finished.
Single households are in fact quite handy in this regard, because they give you a higher flexibility (you can move a single worker and don't have to move two at the same time). The downside is, of course, that more houses require more resources to build and more fuel to keep warm.
As a result of population fluctuations you will soon notice that workers who used to live close to their jobs will switch jobs and have suddenly a new job which is far more remote. To solve this issue you should regularly (every couple years) unassign all jobs by making everyone laborers and then reassign the desired number of workers to each occupation, starting with those where you consider proximity most critical. When you add a worker to an occupation, the laborer closest to an open job of that occupation will be converted, so by reassigning regularly you can re-optimize who does which job.
Regarding the forester lodges, how far are the foresters walking? Do they have houses to live in near the lodges? Do they have stockpiles to drop their wood off at near the lodges? How far do they have to go for food, tools, coats, and herbs when they have a need for those things? Walking can take a lot of time. I've seen students with a large walk time to the school graduate in twice the time of closer students.
Are the lodges overlapping each other or covering lots of area where wood can't grow? There needs to be physical trees within the radius and they need to be not contending with each other.
A full staff of 3 lodges would be 12 foresters, right? That should be overkill. Don't forget to check that they've all got both cut and plant activities active.
Regarding trading for iron and stone, here's a couple of tips.
First, remember to go into the last tab of the trade station window and specify iron and stone as requests, and make sure to set the drop-down to "every time". To maximize the chances, remove other requests.
Second, more trade stations = more trade. I don't expand very fast so I don't know how many trade stations you'd need to support fast growth, but I do know that in my flagship town I have three and am considering building more.
Third, clicking dismiss when you've traded for all you want, to get the trader to leave sooner, might get a new trader sooner. I haven't kept track.
Fourth, remember to have multiple commodities to trade. Some traders are only interested in some things.
Fifth, consider one quarry with one worker. Having a slow trickle of stone can help with minor shortages, and the quarry will last a long, long time under that load.
Best Answer
No, you don't get back all of the resources, you can reclaim only a part of it.
Personally, I start to increase the number of people with Wooden houses. Then, if there are enough people to gather all the needed resources, I start building Stone houses.