Nashville has made the list of top migration destinations for the first time since 2021, according to a new report from Redfin.
It was the ninth-most popular destination for homebuyers looking to relocate to a new metro area in October, with people most commonly moving in from Los Angeles.
“A lot of Nashville locals have been priced out of homeownership, but when you're coming from somewhere like California or New York, housing prices here still seem reasonable,” local Redfin Real Estate Agent Kristin Sanchez said in a release. “Nashville has relatively low property taxes, insurance costs and utility prices, along with no state income tax, all of which definitely help if you’re looking for a lower cost of living.”
The typical home that sold in Nashville in October went for $448,910, roughly half the cost of the typical home in Los Angeles ($880,000).
Sanchez said a lot of her clients are from California, but she has also been working with people from Chicago, New York and Florida. In addition to people moving to Nashville in search of affordability, some buyers are relocating for work. Amazon has a corporate hub in Nashville and financial firm AllianceBernstein moved its corporate headquarters there.
Sacramento, Calif., was the most popular destination for homebuyers looking to move to a new metro area in October. The typical home that sold there in October went for $578,000, roughly a million dollars less than the $1.5 million typical home in San Francisco—the most popular origin of buyers moving to Sacramento.
Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla., were the second and third most popular destinations for homebuyers looking to relocate.
Myrtle Beach, S.C., ranked fourth after making its debut on Redfin’s list of most popular destinations in July at number 9. In addition to Orlando, three other Florida metros made the top 10: North Port-Sarasota, Cape Coral and Tampa.
Many of these metros have a few things in common: They’re more affordable than the most common origin of homebuyers moving in, they’re in the Sun Belt and they face intensifying climate risks. Florida, for example, is endangered by hurricanes and flooding, and Sacramento and Las Vegas face risk from high heat. Insurers have pulled out of vulnerable areas in recent months, which could ultimately lead to a decline in home values in some places.
Homebuyers are leaving San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles more than any other metros in the country. That’s based on net outflow, a measure of how many more Redfin.com users are looking to leave a metro than move in.
It’s typical for expensive job centers to top the list of places homebuyers are moving away from as those people seek more affordable housing. Homebuyers leaving Los Angeles, for instance, are most commonly moving to Las Vegas, where homes are roughly half the price.
While San Francisco saw a net outflow in October, it was a much smaller net outflow than a year earlier. That’s likely in part because home prices fell during that time, bringing some buyers back to the market. San Francisco’s $1.5 million median home sale price in October was nearly 10 percent below the record high in April 2022, Redfin added.
Nationwide, 24.7 percent of Redfin.com users looked to move to a different metro area in October, down from 25.9 percent the month before. While that’s the largest month-over-month drop on record, the share remains higher than pre-pandemic levels. That’s because housing affordability has become increasingly strained, meaning that while fewer people are moving in general, many of the people who are moving are relocating to different metros to get more bang for their buck.
In October, there was a month-over-month uptick in the number of Redfin.com users looking to move within their home metro and a downtick in the number looking to move outside of their home metro, which helps explain why the share of users looking to leave home dropped.
On a year-over-year basis, the number of Redfin.com users looking to move away from their metro area fell 7.9 percent in October — the second largest decrease in records dating back to 2017 (the largest drop was in September). The number of Redfin.com users looking to move within their metro also declined from a year earlier, dropping 10.8 percent, but that is the smallest decline in about a year.
The number of people relocating has fallen in recent months because moving has become more expensive. The 30-year-fixed mortgage rate in October hit 7.79 percent—the highest level in 23 years—and home prices were up 3.5 percent from a year earlier. But mortgage rates have fallen in recent weeks, which could prompt more people to move and purchase homes in the coming months.