Single-Family Home Movers Seek Warm Weather, Affordable Homes

Florida continued to be a top destination for movers this year, as people sought warm weather, beaches and abundant rental properties. That is one key takeaway from the latest Magnet States Report, which analyzes moves by thousands of Allied Van Lines customers and home-value data from Zillow.

The top three destination states for people who moved with Allied in 2021 are: Florida, with 5,684 moves; Texas, at 4,739 moves and 3,253 moves in California. 

For those who had work-related moves, Texas and California are the top destination states for the last five years, as both have strong economies and a large workforce. 

Texas is the ninth-largest economy in the world with a lower cost of living and no corporate income tax. California is attractive to many small businesses, according to Forbes, because of top talent, a stronger customer base, and great weather. Small businesses make up 99.8% of all business within California and employ 48.8% of the state’s workforce.

Texas is projected to grow its population by more than 5 million residents by 2030 as an increasing number of companies such as Tesla, Oracle and Charles Schwab have moved operations to the Lone Star State according to the Austin Business Journal. 

“In 2021, residents intensified the trend that began in 2020 of moving to more affordable neighborhoods,” Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker said in prepared remarks. “The combination of rapidly rising home values and more available remote-working jobs has pushed people to seek out parts of the country where their home-buying dollar goes further. But some of 2020’s most popular destinations like Phoenix and Austin have gotten so expensive, so quickly that they are losing some of their appeal as affordable options.”

Movers Saving Average of $35,800 on Homes

The average interstate mover in 2021 moved to a ZIP code where homes were about $35,800 cheaper than where they came from, amplifying a trend that first broke out in 2020, when movers began migrating from pricier to much more affordable locations. 

The comparable average ZIP-level price decline in 2020 was about $29,500. Before the pandemic, people tended to move to ZIP codes with very similar average prices: the average ZIP-level price change was only a decrease of less than $7,500 in each year from 2016 to 2019.

The top destinations for net inbound moves in 2021 are mid-priced growing Sunbelt metro areas, while the top origins for net outbound moves are in places that are colder, pricier, or both.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area topped the rankings for the most net inbound moves in 2021, pulling in movers especially from pricey Los Angeles and chilly Chicago, as well as Phoenix.

Chicago tops the list of metro areas that originated the most net outbound moves, sending the most movers south and west to Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Los Angeles.