A Rent Cafe study on Affordable Migration in the US shows people are leaving LA, Chicago, New York, Miami, Washington D.C. and San Jose, in droves, for places with cheaper housing. Texas has five of the top 10 inbound cities.
- Metro Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Dallas-Fort Worth top the list of areas with the largest net population increases between 2012 and 2017.
- With a median income just $3,000 less than that in Los Angeles and a rent $1,000 cheaper, Maricopa County has become increasingly popular among those fleeing hot markets like the ones in California. Same goes for the top Texas counties in our list where the median income is above that in Manhattan ($83,500).
- The top counties for in-migration present great advantages in terms of housing affordability. In this category, the rent is anywhere from 14% to 26% of the median income, while in the top 10 out-migration counties it can reach a whopping 64%.
- What do Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Miami, Washington, D.C. and San Jose metro areas all have in common? Besides high levels of housing unaffordability, these are all places where US residents are leaving in droves. The home price to income ratio ranges here from 6.3 times to 13.2 times the median income, while a renter household earning the median income is considered rent-burdened.
Reasons for Moving
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, around 55% of those who decide to move do so for a housing-related reason, such as to relocate to a new or better home, to find cheaper housing, or to own their home instead of rent.
Although the Chicago metro area has a solid economy and a competitive job market, many are leaving it to escape the high taxes.
Chicago area property taxes are higher than 93% of the U.S. Steep county and city sales taxes are adding to the total tax burden.
Also important to take into account is that Cook County is the second largest county in the U.S., 5.2 million people.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
God – I hope those liberals stay up north and out west. Everywhere they go they ruin it. Just ask any of the neighboring states to California – they all complain about Cali but then vote in Leftist as soon as they arrive in their new location – thereby dismantling the policies that made their new location attractive. Austin Texas is already overrun with Leftist / Socialism it sickens and saddens me to see Texas infected by these people. Question is – where the hell will they move once every state is bankrupt like California?
There have to be buyers in high cost areas to drive the movement. They are coming from China and elsewhere. If foreign money into the US slows down there will be a domino effect on the overall movement in reverse. Once demand dries up so does everything else including the economy. Housing, health care and finance cannot sustain this boom just like the last time. 1 dollar of debt now only produces 10 cents of GDP. That is big trouble for the developed world.
maybe people are moving from LA to Riverside, not Texas? If you are right, that’s great news for our democracy.
Just don’t confuse Denton County with with Denton Texas. Denton TX has lower median incomes and home prices than Denton County. Denton County includes some nicer suburban areas, master-planned communities and other cities. I should know, I live here. If you are moving to the DFW area, give me a call. 🙂
This should be of little surprise. Houses have been growing at about 10%/year in the SF Bay Area, and at the same time, many people are now fully recovered from the GFC. This makes retirement an option, especially with Obamacare in place. Downsizing from a 2,500 sq. ft. home in the Bay Area to Nowhere, TX is even more appealing. If your house in Santa Clara doubled from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 since 2009 and you decide to move to TX where the houses have increased 50% from $200,000 to $300,000 in the same time, you are $900,000 ahead.
Beyond retirement (many of my friends look at their Bay Area houses as their additional 401(k)), there are also people who are looking for a place to bring up a family. Where I live we see SF couples move in with small kids who have sold their 1,000 sq ft apartment in SF (or stopped renting) for a house with a yard in the ‘burbs. Moving further is just putting more miles on the U-Haul, and the further you go the cheaper it gets.
I think what we might be seeing here is good old supply and demand in a market with an increasingly steep gradient in house prices.
The real question is “why is the house price gradient in nominal terms increasing between CA and TX?”.
I found a well researched answer in “The New Geography of Jobs”, by Enrico Moretti.
Sharing your article.
Bogus story and disappointing to see figures unquestioned. First off, average rents in a large city like NY or CHI are going to be very skewed by the uber expensive flats. Median rent will be far lower. Second, this is DOMESTIC migration. Why is that important? Because if you actually go look at the census data you’ll see that (for NYC) a) it is offset by International migration and b) that the population of the city has been growing. So yeah, FAKE NEWS.
From article linked: “Interestingly enough, 8 out of the 10 counties that have the biggest net losses in population due to domestic migration are otherwise growing in overall population thanks to immigration and births.” and about Manhattan “median cost of a home in the borough is $1.1M, 13 times the median income. The price to income ratio is a commonly used indicator of how much house one can afford and the recommended ratio is 2.6.”
Real estate is priced too highly for normal Americans in places where there are huge concentrations of illegal immigrants which cause excessive demand for real estate since they add additional demand and when concentration of illegals becomes too high Americans of all ethnicities start moving out.
Whites, Asians, Latinos and Blacks are all moving away from areas where illegal immigrants concentrate.
That’s why real estate is so expensive in even more concentrated places, like Brazilian favelas…..
In free societies, competition ensures manufactured goods are priced very close to their cost of production. And, lo and behold, walls, roofs and plumbing pipes are all manufactured goods….
Of course, an inevitable corollary to that economic truism, is that the degree to which the price of a manufactured good is higher than its cost of manufacture, is a direct measure of the lack of freedom of a society.
Which is, of course, the reason why people can’t afford houses: Lack of Freedom. Slaves never really were in a position to afford houses. Its just that simple. “Immigrants,” Martians and other hobgoblins have exactly zero to do with any of it. Hobgoblins are all imaginary, remember…
Cost of real estate is high mainly because of Fed pumping money into the economy and regulators which have enabled banks to make excessive loans since when people get bigger loans they have more money to buy real estate and more people being ready to spend more loaned money to buy real estate leads to real estate prices rising.
Having high real estate prices is bad for an economy since more of the wealth of the nation is diverted to real estate instead of other uses.
Since everyone has to live somewhere high real estate prices are NOT a benefit for home owners or renters.
Only people benefiting from high real estate prices are speculators, huge owners of real estate, realtors, banks and builders.
The connection between cost to build and cost buy the real estate got lost years ago and that is why home builders were really good stocks until 2008 and that is why banks have had excessive profits.
Bad news for the incoming cities. The migrants will eventually turn the receiving cities into the same mess from which they fleeing. The free shit ethic won’t die simply because the recipients have relocated.
What you say is only partly true. Those willing to move to find a job tend to be people who more aggressively pursue self-advancement, and who are less likely to be after a handout. Those that stay behind are less apt to be looking for self-advancement, and more apt to be getting a handout. This is not a new trend – people have been leaving the Rust best for Texas for forty years, and Texas has not become a liberal bastion yet, while many rust-belt states are more liberal than they were.
Things do get a bit less clear cut, when the only available means for self advancement, is Fed handouts….. As has increasingly been the case since Nixon went retard. And is, by now, largely a job completed.
Those inbound state home prices have been rising fast in the last 2 years. It looks cheap compared to California. There is going to be local displacement with the locals trying to buy a home and getting priced out by cashed out Californians.
Dallas-Fort Worth is a Democrat city in a Republican state. You can search that. Same thing happens with Austin.
All of the big Texas cities are heavily Democratic: DFW, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso – it’s the conservative rural and small towns that keep the state red. That and gerrymandering and vote suppression efforts.
Come on Mish. What else do these areas have in common?
Democrats are in power.
Democrats have been in power for decades and decades
Corruption
Insane public unions
Insane regulations
Pandering to the massive free sh*t army
Massive voter fraud
Sanctuary cities
I am sure you can think of more…
They are places where the predominant source of income is welfare, issued by the Fed in the form of checks handed out to “asset”, including housing, owners. In exchange for nothing more than them remaining stupid, pliant, well indoctrinated and uncritical self serving supporters of “the system.” Rather than from doing any sort of productive work.
People who can’t rely on Fed welfare to keep them in Mercedes’, have little choice but to attempt doing something at least nominally productive. Hence little choice but to move to places where such activities take occasionally takes place.
The states people are fleeing are all liberal states. And they will eventually ruin the places they are going when they turn them liberal too. TX used to be solidly Rep 20 yrs ago, now its purple. WA, AZ, NV, OR, NC, FL were much more conservative before the influx from LIB states & immigrants. Even ID and MT are getting more Libs. People are not just fleeing high house prices, they are fleeing high taxes too. IL, NY, CT, NJ, CA….taxes, taxes, taxes and more taxes,