The majority of people who are uprooting and moving to another city are typically leaving larger cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and heading to smaller cities with more affordable housing market and better job opportunities.
Realtor.com looked at the data sets of Census Bureau migration data collected from 2009 to 2013 that tracked people’s moves in and out of metropolitan areas, the number of cross-metro moving requests on moving.com, and cross-metro search traffic on realtor.com to determine the cities people are migrating to and migrating from most.
For example, Tampa, Fla., with a median home price of $230,000 and a 4.4 percent unemployment rate came out on top of the list for cities gaining the most residents while New York, and its $399,000 median home price and 5.0 percent unemployment rate was the city losing the most residents. The top ten for both of these lists all share this same contrast as Tampa and New York; cities gaining the most residents are relatively inexpensive and have low unemployment rates while cities losing the most residents are much more expensive and/or have higher unemployment rates.
Jacksonville, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., complete the top three for cities gaining the most residents while Chicago and Detroit are second and third for cities losing the most residents. While Jacksonville and Charlotte have unemployment rates of 4.4 percent and 4.9 percent respectively, Chicago and Detroit are sitting at corresponding levels of unemployment of 6.6 percent and 5.6 percent. Every city that is losing residents has either a very expensive housing market or a high unemployment rate while the opposite can be said for cities that are gaining the most residents.
When adjusting the list of places people are moving to most to only include Millennials, the list changes slightly. Most notably, San Antonio jumps into the number one spot, Oklahoma City makes an appearance on the list in the sixth spot, and New Orleans is also a new addition in seventh place.
For the full lists of places where people are moving to and from most, click the link below.
