This Is the Top City Americans Are Moving To

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the Top City Americans Are Moving To

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Americans have gone through a period of extraordinary mobility. The high costs of living and real estate in the major coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco are part of the reason. Also, low mortgage rates have made homes more affordable, and the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed people who work from home to relocate from cities where their companies have offices to almost anywhere in the country.

One iconic byproduct of mobility is that home prices in some modest-sized (by population) states and cities have soared. People have crowded into Idaho, Oregon, Tennessee and South Carolina, along with some of the cities within their borders. Census data for 2021 likely will show population increases in these states and cities that are higher than the U.S. average.

Mayflower, the large moving company, recently released a study titled “Finding Home.”
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In the study, the moves were measured by those inbound to state and city between July 2019 and July 2021. The data were collected between September 13 and September 23. The study claims the data reflect gender, generation and measures of the census by region. One conclusion the researchers took from the data:

[It] revealed nearly three-fourths of Americans (74%) feel they have a hometown. However, the meaning of “hometown” is in the eye of the beholder: 58% think of their hometown as the place they come from, while 42% think of their hometown as the place they’re currently living.

The states with the most inbound moves were Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida.

The city with the most inbound moves was Sarasota, Florida, where 76.9% of all moves were inbound. It was followed by Wilmington, Fort Myers, Santa Fe and Boise.

Here are the top 10 cities where people are moving:

  • Sarasota, Fla. (76.9% inbound)
  • Wilmington, N.C. (75.9% inbound)
  • Fort Myers-Cape Coral, Fla. (75.1% inbound)
  • Santa Fe, N.M. (73.1% inbound)
  • Boise, Idaho (69.8% inbound)
  • Huntsville, Ala. (68.0% inbound)
  • Daytona Beach, Fla. (66.8% inbound)
  • Knoxville, Tenn. (66.7% inbound)
  • Nashville, Tenn. (65.1% inbound)
  • West Palm Beach, Fla. (64.7% inbound)

Click here to read about America’s 50 best cities to live in.
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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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