Fastest-Growing Cities? Census Bureau Says Look West and South

As the Census Bureau analysis continues on the 2020 decennial count of the country, there’s more specific data on the general trend that virtually anyone in commercial real estate knows: people are moving from various parts of the country to the Sun Belt and West.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence from the industry as companies move to or expand in these regions, people who follow jobs need housing, and retailers gear up to sell businesses and consumers what they need. Now the government has data (including useful tables) to show more specifically where people have been heading.

“Eight of the 15 fastest-growing large cities or towns by percent change were in the West — with five in Arizona — and seven in the South,” the agency notes. “The South and West also contained the top 15 cities with the largest numeric gains — 11 in the South and four in the West.”

The top 15 cities by population remained the largest but more than half saw the number of people there drop from 2020 to 2021. Whether that is a permanent shift, or a temporary result of the pandemic is impossible to know at the moment. 

The top 15 fastest growing by percentage cities with 50,000 or more people ranged from Nampa City, Idaho (106,186 population, up 5%) to Georgetown City, Texas (75,420, 10.5%). That’s serious growth that requires a lot of building of all sorts to keep up.

Then there were the 15 fastest growing by absolute numbers. McKinney City, Texas (202,690) population) saw an influx of 5,568 people. At the top of this group was San Antonio, Texas, population 1.45 million, which saw an additional 13,626 residents.

Housing stock grew by 1.3 million units between July 2020 and July 2021, for a total of 142.2 million—an annual growth rate of about 1%. California (14.5 million new units), Texas (11.9 million) and Florida (10.1 million) had the largest raw numbers of housing increases. By percentage, the top states were Utah (2.7%), Idaho (2.5%), and Texas (2.0%).

Slowest growth came to Rhode Island (0.2%), Illinois (0.2%), and West Virginia (0.3%). 

One item to note is concentration. More than 75% of the incorporated places in the US have populations of less than 5,000. 

Given the public data sources at the Census Bureau, investors and developers could search for areas of population growth to target their efforts.