Moving Trends for 2025

Why did you leave?

I'm not saying that there's no money in Chicago. What IM saying g is it pales in comparison to ther cities/states as of late. Hell even the bears are possibly moving.
I left for reasons to start a family. Many the same reason people move out of the city and into suburbs every day, I just made a larger jump, LOL. Some days I regret doing it, some days I don't. I have heard of the death of Chicago, New York, every city in California for my entire adult life. It's all nonsense. It is people imparting their personal views on an entire region, which I get because I don't think I could live in California either because I hate the traffic. Regardless, Urban centers still drive this nation. Those areas that actually can grow are in other states. Large cities on East coast and Chicago would need to stack people on top of people. Boise, ID? Denver, CO? Charlston, SC? Probably more open space there.

Still would place it mostly on weather and boomers going south and west. Despite some of the areas the show inflows, they saw declines in home prices. Places like Austin, Tampa, Miami, Phoenix. I'm not sure how to reconcile the two.
 
Yes and no. WA doesn't have an income tax, but we vote blue. I know several people that want to move to Idaho because of politics, but Idaho has a pretty high income tax... It doesn't make financial sense. It's strictly tribal
Hence the often. Im not speaking in absolute either. Wyoming is on the opposite end of the spectrum for me as far as taxes. Thats not near as appealing to me as the outdoor opportunities would be.
 
Hilton Head SC is about the only place that could pry me out of Wyo.
Hilton Head along with all the GA/SC sea islands were incredible 30-40 years ago. They were a little known hunter and fisherman paradise. It is terribly sad what has happened.
 
I think as @Irrelevant states, it's a lot of things.

I live in a subdivision that was designed to be semi-well-to-do, but the developer went bankrupt executing it in 2009 when that economic downturn occured. Lucky for my wife and I, we swooped in at the lowest prices, and for the last 4 years lots in this subdivision are selling for more than I built my house for (~$200K). The majority of my neighbors are a specific demographic, but I'd say half moved here in the last 10 years, and anecdotally they basically all did so because they felt the places they lived had gone to shit (Washington, California, Oregon). They don't talk about taxes, though they do allude to politics, and I have a mild concern that theirs are oversimplified relative to the Montana I grew up in, and are largely prescribed the internet. The number one theme I hear though, is that this is a far better place to raise their kids than where they came from. I would agree.

As an aside, between 1980 and 2025, Montana was the only U.S. state where the native-born population growth outpaced foreign-born growth. I thought that was an interesting statistic - and is more a function of circumstances combined, and not with anything moral.

I think what we see in the OP's map is the United States as a city with neighborhoods, and on the ever-changing bell curve of American preference, some neighborhoods are more desirable than others. Some are better for work, some are better for play, and some are where the cool people go. It's just a personal opinion, but the place I grew up was so much better when it was unpopular, though I acknowledge a good-old-days bias for most people in most places.
 
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Then they are bad at their jobs or being very hyperbolic. Medicaid is worse then Medicare to deal with and we'd all prefer to milk that private tit. But losing money on Medicare should be the exception not the rule.
For the record - i dont disagree. Its an outrage the costs are that high, if they are. But...


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Ive had 3 neighbors at a short term rental, all from the east and west coast.

They all moved here for a simpler life and lower cost of living. Seems to be common reasons, especially being older with a sack of cash in home equity.
 
People move for a number of reasons and stay for equally as many. Many have continued in states they hate because their job is there while they count the days until they can move. Others, stay because their families are there and prioritize living near family.

It takes a lot of initiative to move and takes none to stay. Sometimes the initiative comes from losing that anchor job.

As far as NC vs SC goes. SC is more rural. Of course, if you are an academic, NC is better. Interesting about the comments about SC roads. It's been a while since I lived in NC, but it was a running joke about how bad their roads were both in the cities and on the interstate. We regularly traveled to SC and never experienced their bad roads, but it's been a while.

Fwiw, NC is on my list of never live there again. YMMV.

Went on a tour in Belize with a couple from SC. I commented that I was surprised by how good the roads in Belize were. Both the husband and wife contended that NC and SC had way worse roads, and were shocked that Oregon roads were good.
 
I'll simply agree to disagree with many of the underlying assumptions. Like people actually want socialism. I don't think that's true, for all the reasons in that article. People simply don't want, or can't stand, what we have, and socialism being so fundamentally different must therefore be better.

In an era of easy mobility, great people will always choose to live in great places. What defines a great place is up for debate and varies by each of us, with some common threads. I will go out on a limb and say that California will always have a thriving economy because it's a great place, like physical space, to live in. It's beautiful and the weather is perfect. For the same reasons, I don't think ND (or WY to a lesser degree) will ever become a huge population center (sorry to all of you who like ND, it's nothing personal).

What I think is more interesting is the observation that people move to an area to make money (some money, more money, whatever), get sick of it (the crime, the smog, and housing costs, the traffic, the taxes, etc. etc. etc), so they move to a different area with different characteristics, ones they think they want more, yet for some fairly consistent reason, they then seak to slowly change this new place to have the same things of the place they left. I don't understand that. I don't understand it for the same reason why people would move because of "politics". It just doesn't make sense to me. But as I've found, many people, and many people's actions, don't make sense.

A lot of it is lifestyle pace, and of course we're biased here on HT. In the last 5 years I've spent more time in Portland and SF than I did in the previous 30 years and come to the conclusion that those are both fine cities. I wouldn't want to live there, but I understand why people do. Some folks want the bustle of activity and diversity of dining choices at the tip of their fingers and would be bored out of their skulls going home to their 5 acres outside of town immediately after clocking out.

So weird to me when someone says "I can't understand why anyone would want to live in X place..." Different strokes for different folks.
 
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