The cities Americans are moving to most in 2026 — and the ones they're leaving behind |
The cities Americans are moving to most in 2026 — and the ones they're leaving behind
Expensive cities keep pushing residents out. Redfin measured net migration for 100 U.S. metros in Q4 2025 to find the top gainers and losers
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The price gap between expensive cities and affordable ones now runs wide enough to change where people choose to live. Buyers who cannot afford the markets they grew up in — or the ones where they built careers — are increasingly treating the question of where to live as a financial decision first and everything else second. The calculation is not complicated. Cheaper home prices mean smaller down payments, reduced monthly obligations, and in some cases the difference between owning something and renting forever. That arithmetic is redrawing the U.S. migration map one searcher at a time.
Nearly one in five house hunters — 18.8% — looked to move to a different part of the country in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 17.9% a year prior and up from 15.9% a half-decade earlier. The steady rise carries a counterintuitive detail. The pandemic era, when remote work was at its peak and rates were hovering near 3%, generated a lower share of would-be relocators than the market saw in late 2025. Mortgage rates eased somewhat over the course of 2025, and inventory grew enough to give buyers options they had been waiting on. Many of those buyers used the opening to act on plans they had been deferring. Acting meant moving.
Redfin, the real estate brokerage, tracked search behavior across the 100 largest U.S. metro areas in the fourth quarter of 2025. The company measured the net inflow and net outflow of home searchers in each market — the difference between how many people were flowing into a metro from elsewhere and how many were looking out — to rank which cities are gaining the most interest from outside buyers and which are losing residents to somewhere else. The results show a consistent pattern at both ends of the list.
Loser: Los Angeles tops the country in resident outflow
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Los Angeles posted a net outflow of 25,908 Redfin home searchers in the fourth quarter of 2025, the largest departure figure of any metro in the country. The gap between Los Angeles and second-place New York was nearly 3,000 searchers, making Los Angeles the clear leader in outbound migration by a significant margin.
The primary driver is cost. The typical home in Los Angeles sells for roughly twice the price of its Las Vegas equivalent — the top out-of-state destination for people leaving Los Angeles — where the median sits at $435,000. Buyers who stay within California most often redirect their searches to San Diego. Those willing to cross state lines overwhelmingly choose Las Vegas, where the same housing budget stretches considerably further and the tax environment differs from California's.
Los Angeles has long topped outflow lists, but the scale of its departure numbers reflects conditions that have compounded over years. Home prices in the metro remain among the highest in the country. Elevated purchase prices, persistent insurance costs tied to wildfire risk, and a high state tax burden give buyers strong financial reasons to consider alternatives. Many who can work remotely have already made the move, and those still in the market continue to act on the same set of pressures.
The pattern among those leaving is consistent: buyers are not searching for comparable cities. They are searching for places where the same income supports a materially better housing outcome. For a buyer priced out of a starter home in Los Angeles, the prospect of a larger house in a lower-cost market represents not just a real estate decision but a recalibration of what ownership can look like.
Los Angeles's outflow is also the primary engine behind the strong inbound numbers in both Las Vegas and Sacramento. Both cities appear in the top five destinations nationally, and both list Los Angeles as either their top overall origin or the leading out-of-state source. The migration corridor between greater Los Angeles and its most affordable neighbors has become one of the most traveled in the country.
Loser: New York is shedding residents to cheaper neighbors
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New York recorded a net outflow of 23,080 home searchers in the fourth quarter of 2025, the second-largest departure total in the country. The top destination for those leaving is Philadelphia, which is also the leading out-of-state choice, meaning the movement out of New York is primarily a short-range, mid-Atlantic phenomenon.
The cost explanation is direct. A home in Philadelphia sells for less than half the price of a comparable property in New York. For buyers who have spent years in one of the country's most expensive rental and purchase markets, Philadelphia offers proximity — it is about 90 minutes by train — alongside a dramatically lower price floor. A buyer who cannot cover a one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn can purchase a row house in South Philadelphia with money left over.
New York's outflow differs from Los Angeles's in one notable way: it is more geographically concentrated. Los Angeles buyers scatter across multiple states and Sun Belt metros. New York searchers cluster around Philadelphia and a handful of Northeast alternatives. That concentration reflects the specific calculus of East Coast buyers, many of whom remain tethered to jobs or family networks within a commutable or drivable radius of the metro.
The scale of New York's outbound migration — more than 23,000 net searchers in a single quarter — illustrates how persistently the city's cost structure pushes buyers toward the exits. New York has topped or come close to topping this list in prior periods,........