A record 26% of Redfin.com users are looking to move out of their hometown. Relatively affordable places like Las Vegas, Sacramento and Myrtle Beach are among the most popular destinations for relocating homebuyers, partly because stubbornly high mortgage rates are making housing payments so expensive.
More than one-quarter (25.8%) of homebuyers are looking to move to a different part of the country, a record-high share and up from 23.7% a year ago. The portion of homebuyers looking to relocate has steadily risen since the pandemic began; the share stood at roughly 18% in 2018 and 2019.
The data in this report is based on the searches of about two million Redfin.com users who viewed for-sale homes online across more than 100 metro areas from May 2023 to July 2023. Scroll down for full methodology.
While a record share of homebuyers are looking to relocate, the number is lower than it was a year ago as the frequency of homes changing hands drops to its lowest level in at least a decade amid the cool housing market. There are 7% fewer Redfin.com users looking to move away from their home metro than a year ago. That’s compared with a 17% decline for those staying in their hometown.
Myrtle Beach, SC has broken onto the list of most popular migration destinations for the first time on record. The South Carolina beach town is the 9th-most popular destination for relocating homebuyers, with people most commonly moving in from Washington, D.C. and New York.
Homebuyers are moving to Myrtle Beach for its relatively affordable homes and outdoorsy lifestyle, as is the case for most of the most popular migration destinations. The share of homebuyers moving to a different metro has been on the uptick since the pandemic began, bringing with it remote work and, for many Americans, the freedom to relocate. People moving from pricey East Coast job hubs to Myrtle Beach can get much more house for their money. The typical home in the Myrtle Beach metro sells for about $360,000, compared with over $600,000 in Washington, D.C. and $800,000 in New York.
“This area attracts a lot of retirees, particularly from the Northeast and the West Coast, because of its relatively inexpensive cost of living, low property taxes, golf courses and sunny weather,” said Myrtle Beach Redfin agent Monica Roman. “Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve also seen quite a few remote workers move in, drawn by our reasonably priced housing and year-round vacation lifestyle.”
Metros in the Sun Belt and Florida are the most popular migration destinations despite increasing risk of flooding, heat and hurricanes
Las Vegas tops the list of most popular destinations for Redfin.com users moving to a different metro area for the second month in a row. It’s followed by Sacramento and three Florida metros: Tampa, North Port–Sarasota and Cape Coral. Popularity is determined by net inflow, a measure of how many more Redfin.com users looked to move into an area than leave.
Relatively affordable metros with warm weather are typically the most popular destinations. Metro areas in the Sun Belt and Florida are perennially in the top 10 metros for relocating Redfin.com users. Housing affordability is an especially big draw as today’s elevated mortgage rates combine with stubbornly high home prices to push monthly mortgage payments near record highs.
Metros in the southern half of the U.S. are popular despite many of them facing increasing risk from climate change. For instance, Las Vegas faces severe heat risk, Tampa faces extreme flood risk and Myrtle Beach faces extreme risk of hurricanes and other severe wind events. People keep moving to those areas, though, largely because they’re typically relatively affordable. The median home price in Las Vegas is $415,000, compared to nearly $1 million in Los Angeles, the most common origin for homebuyers moving in. And the typical home costs $430,000 in Tampa, roughly half the cost of one in New York, where homebuyers most commonly come from.
It’s worth noting that there are fewer homebuyers moving into 8 of the 10 most popular destinations than there were a year ago as high mortgage rates cool the housing market.
| Top 10 Metros Homebuyers Are Moving Into, by Net Inflow
Net inflow = Number of Redfin.com home searchers looking to move into a metro area, minus the number of searchers looking to leave |
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| Rank | Metro* | Net Inflow, July 2023 | Net Inflow, July 2022 | Top Origin | Top Out-of-State Origin
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| 1 | Las Vegas, NV | 5,400 | 6,500 | Los Angeles, CA | Los Angeles, CA |
| 2 | Sacramento, CA | 5,100 | 9,000 | San Francisco, CA | Chicago, IL |
| 3 | Orlando, FL | 4,600 | 1,300 | New York, NY | New York, NY |
| 4 (tie) | Tampa, FL | 4,400 | 7,800 | New York, NY | New York, NY |
| 4 (tie) | North Port-Sarasota, FL | 4,400 | 5,500 | New York, NY | New York, NY |
| 6 | Cape Coral, FL | 3,800 | 5,600 | Chicago, IL | Chicago, IL |
| 7 (tie) | Dallas, TX | 3,700 | 5,500 | Los Angeles, CA | Los Angeles, CA |
| 7 (tie) | Phoenix, AZ | 3,700 | 6,600 | Seattle, WA | Seattle, WA |
| 9 | Myrtle Beach, SC | 3,600 | 3,000 | Washington, D.C. | Washington, D.C. |
| 10 | Houston, TX | 3,400 | 3,700 | New York, NY | New York, NY |
| *Combined statistical areas with at least 500 users searching to and from the region in May 2023-July 2023 | |||||
Homebuyers are leaving expensive coastal cities for more affordable places
Homebuyers are leaving San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles more than any other metro in the country. That’s based on net outflow, a measure of how many more Redfin.com users are looking to leave a metro than move in.
Pricey coastal job centers are typically among the metros homebuyers most commonly leave. That’s largely because buyers are often looking to relocate to places with more affordable housing, something that has become more feasible with the prevalence of remote work. It has also become more feasible to move to beachy vacation towns: Homebuyers leaving Washington, D.C. are most commonly moving to the Salisbury, MD metro and those leaving Boston are most commonly moving to the Portland, ME metro.
| Top 10 Metros Homebuyers Are Leaving, by Net Outflow
Net outflow = Number of Redfin.com home searchers looking to leave a metro area, minus the number of searchers looking to move in |
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| Rank | Metro* | Net Outflow, July 2023 | Net Outflow, July 2022 | Portion of Local Users Searching Elsewhere | Top Destination | Top Out-of-State Destination
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| 1 | San Francisco, CA | 27,100 | 38,700 | 24% | Sacramento, CA | Seattle, WA |
| 2 | New York, NY | 24,500 | 25,200 | 29% | Miami, FL | Miami, FL |
| 3 | Los Angeles, CA | 20,800 | 32,700 | 19% | Las Vegas, NV | Las Vegas, NV |
| 4 | Washington, D.C. | 15,100 | 18,600 | 19% | Salisbury, MD | Salisbury, MD |
| 5 | Chicago, IL | 5,200 | 2,300 | 17% | Milwaukee, WI | Milwaukee, WI |
| 6 | Boston, MA | 4,600 | 9,900 | 21% | Portland, ME | Portland, ME |
| 7 | Hartford, CT | 3,400 | 600 | 79% | Boston, MA | Boston, MA |
| 8 | Seattle, WA | 3,100 | 12,500 | 19% | Spokane, WA | Phoenix, AZ |
| 9 (tie) | Denver, CO | 2,100 | 4,500 | 35% | Chicago, IL | Chicago, IL |
| 9 (tie) | Detroit, MI | 2,100 | 5,000 | 26% | Grand Rapids, MI | Cape Coral, FL |
| *Combined statistical areas with at least 500 users searching to and from the region in May 2023-July 2023 | ||||||
Below is a map of the most common origins of Redfin.com users who are moving to the Las Vegas metro. To view similar maps for the metros in this report and other metros, please visit the area’s Redfin housing market page and scroll down to the “migration” section.
Methodology
Our migration analysis is based on about two million Redfin.com users who viewed for-sale homes online across more than 100 metro areas from May 2023 to July 2023. To measure the share of homebuyers looking to relocate from one metro to another, we calculate the portion of overall home searchers that are migrants.
A Redfin.com user counts as a migrant if they viewed at least 10 for-sale homes in the relevant three-month period and at least one of those homes was outside their home metro area. For instance, if a Redfin.com user based in Seattle views 10 homes in a three-month period and all of them are in Phoenix, that user counts as a full migrant to Phoenix. If a user based in Seattle views 10 homes in a three-month period and five are in Phoenix but five are in San Diego, that user counts as half of a migrant to Phoenix and half of a migrant to San Diego. If a user based in Seattle views 10 homes in a three-month period, nine in Seattle and one in Phoenix, that user counts as one-tenth of a migrant to Phoenix.
The analysis includes combined statistical areas with at least 500 Redfin.com users based in that region and at least 500 users searching for homes in that region. For instance, a user based in Seattle searching for a home in Phoenix counts toward the first condition, a user based in Phoenix searching for a home in Seattle counts toward the second condition, and a user based in Seattle searching for a home in Seattle counts toward both. Redfin’s migration data goes back to 2017.
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