The siren call of South Florida’s beaches and warm weather is still working on homebuyers weighing relocation, according to Redfin.
November marked Miami’s fourth consecutive month as the most popular migration location among major metros, according to a report from the company. The net inflow — or the difference between users looking to move into a market versus those looking to leave — was 9,376 in October and November.
Miami can tout warm weather and lower taxes among its unique offerings, in addition to less stringent pandemic restrictions than the Northeast. The city offers a cut-and-dried example of its appeal among remote work policies: its inflow has nearly tripled since this time last year, with New York as its top place of origin for relocating Redfin users.
Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento and Tampa round out the report’s top five most popular migration destinations. Two other South Florida cities also placed in the report’s top 10: Cape Coral and North Port.
The cities snatched up Redfin users looking to flee big cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, which claimed the top three spots, respectively, in net outflow in October and November. Chicago also placed in the top ten in net outflow, finishing seventh.
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Redfin’s migration analysis looked at 2 million users searching for homes across 111 metro areas. To qualify for the dataset, a user needed to view at least 10 homes in one area with at least 80 percent of their searches.
Search data showed 30.3 percent of users were looking at homes outside of their local area, similar to the 30.2 percent of users doing the same in the third quarter. It’s a more significant rise from pre-pandemic levels, which hovered between 25 and 26 percent.
“Interest in relocating to a different part of the country will remain elevated as long as homebuyers have the ability to pick up and move, like a lot of people do now,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said.
Interest in moving and actually moving are not the same thing, however. Despite the prevailing idea that it’s easier than ever to move due to the rise in remote work, migration numbers tell a different story.
More than 27 million people, or about 8.4 percent of residents moved in the previous year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data reported by The Associated Press. It’s the lowest amount of reported movement in 73 years.
From 2019 to 2020, 9.3 percent of residents reported moving, a far cry from the peak recorded between 1984 and 1985, when 20 percent of American residents reported moving.