Monthly Moving Trends: The Big Cities Everyone Wants to Move to in 2024 — June 2024

Every month, we pull the freshest data from the moveBuddha Moving Cost Calculator to gain real-time insights into U.S. migration trends. Here, we rank the 150 most-populous U.S. cities by their in-to-out move ratio, a metric that compares the volume of users interested in moving to each city with the volume of users interested in moving away.

Updated: June 30, 2024

Based on our analysis of 148K searches made so far this year, here’s what we found out about which big cities Americans are most interested in moving into and out of in 2024:

• Cary (NC) and Chattanooga (TN), are the top 2 big cities to move to by the in-to-out move ratio, with Corpus Christi (TX) and Knoxville (TN) close behind.
• More Americans are looking to exit big cities than move into them. 23 of the 74 cities with the highest exit rates are in California, and 11 of the 68 cities with the highest inflow rates are in Texas.
• 3 of the top 10 big cities to move to are in NC. The 10 cities earning the highest proportions of interest from movers are: Cary (NC), Chattanooga (TN), Corpus Christi (TX), Knoxville (TN), Frisco (TX), Eugene (OR), Winston-Salem (NC), Raleigh (NC), Tampa (FL), and Bosie (ID).

The top city: #1 Cary earns 2-times more interest for moves in than out

According to moveBuddha's latest data, the big city with the highest inflow of new moves is Cary, NC with a move ratio of 2.11, meaning there are 211 moves in for every 100 moves out.

Movers tend to be attracted to safe cities with good schools that they can call home. By all counts Cary is an A+ town and according to Niche it's the #1 best place to live in North Carolina. It's a bonafide town with a population of nearly 175,000, where 67% of residents own their own home.

Along with Cary, Chattanooga, TN earns about twice the interest of moves in than out in 2024, so far. Chattanooga has been a top move-to city in the state for the past few years, seeing three times more interest for moves in than out in 2022.

Texas coastal town, Corpus Christi is also earning a much higher proportion of interest for moves in than out. The rising number of jobs in the Coastal Bend may be a contributing factor, including construction on the billion-dollar Tesla lithium plant and new housing developments.

Compared to the other top 10 big cities drawing in high rates of interest from movers, Corpus Christi homes are much more affordable. As of May 2024, Zillow's Home Value Index shows homes in the region cost about $222k for the typical buyer. That's nearly $200k less than the US median home price of $419k reached in May 2024.

Are big cities attracting new residents or losing them?

Simple math says they are losing. Of the big cities we looked at there were more cities with residents looking to move out than in.

We analyzed the nation's most populous 150 cities, and 144 had a significant volume of searches.

Move-out cities: 74 big cities are seeing more interest in moving out than in. Unsurprisingly, the majority of big cities with the highest exit rates are in California, home to 23 of the 74 big cities seeing way more searches for moves out than in. According to moveBuddha search data, since 2020 the state has seen about two times more interest for moves out vs. in. The city seeing the most interest for moves out is Anaheim, California with a mere 29 searches for moves in for every 100 looking to leave.

Of the 10 cities with lowest move in-to-out ratio —
Avg city size: 424,450
Avg home value: $723,321

Move-in cities: 68 big cities are seeing more interest in moves in than out. Only 10 of these have significant inflow (a move-in-to-out ratio 1.5+). The state with the most move-to cities among this segment is Texas, with 11 big cities earning more interest for moves in. However, even more noteworthy is North Carolina's 3 cities landing among the top 10: Cary, Winston-Salem, and Raleigh.

This underlines that the Carolina's, especially North Carolina, continue to be hot move-to destinations as we hit mid-2024.

Of the 10 cities with highest move in-to-out ratio —
Avg city size: 265,876
Avg home value: $428,277

A closer look at home prices in America's biggest cities finds Sun Belt cities are seeing skyrocketing home values

We examined Zillow's data on home values over the last five years to see which big cities are experiencing spikes in real estate value.

Journalists have noted that, for several years, people, power, and money have been shifting into the Sun Belt. In fact, of the 25 cities with the highest increases in home values in the past five years, 21 are in the Sun Belt.

Indeed the top 5 cities with the highest increase in home values are all in the Sun Belt. And all have in-to-out ratios higher than 1.0, with the exception of Brownsville, which we don't have mover data on.

Overall, these numbers suggest that the high number of Americans relocating to these regions may be straining local affordability. Especially in Knoxville (TN), aspiring homeowners may face sticker shock. The typical home here costs about 90% more today than it did in 2019. For context, the average increase in home values is about 50%, making Knoxville's increase 40% more than the average big city.

Even while some cities seeing huge increases in home prices in the last 5 years are magnets for movers, others are seeing a rise in home prices despite lower interest in relocation.

According to moveBuddha data, Worchester, MA (move in-to-out ratio: 0.73) and Irvine, CA (0.68) are cities that residents are significantly more interested in moving away from. That these cities appear in the top 25 for rising home values despite a seeming lack of interest from relocating Americans suggests that real estate prices are more complex than moves-in vs moves-out.

How long can rising prices and falling demand last?

According to moveBuddha moving expert Ryan Carrigan, “Prices don’t always fall with falling demand if supply is also falling. If there are fewer new homes and not many people looking to buy, the prices of houses might stay the same or even go up because there aren't enough houses for everyone who may want one."

Stay tuned for developments from the 2024 peak summer moving season

• With the busy summer moving season right around the corner, mover searches are increasing.
• This uptick in search data provides clearer insights into which cities are most desirable to movers in 2024

The most popular season for moving is the summer, a time when kids are out of school and the weather is most likely to cooperate.

As people around the country begin to plan their moves, tools like moveBuddha’s Moving Cost Calculator will begin to see higher traffic. The data we glean from the summer months each year is consistently some of the most interesting as to overall migration trends

What are our predictions for the moving data from summer 2024? 

Based on searches from January to June, this summer we are expecting to see a high volume of movers interested in migrating to medium-sized cities in the Sun Belt with low-average to average real estate values.

We predict up-and-coming cities like Cary, Chattanooga, Corpus Christi, Knoxville, Winston-Salem, and Frisco will keep winning new residents, and that other cities comparable in population, price, and climate will start to emerge as potential new mover hotspots. 

Methodology & Sources

We use moveBuddha proprietary data collected from January 2024 through June 28, 2024, to analyze move trends in this report.

The data comes directly from searches using the moveBuddha Moving Cost Calculator.

In-to-out ratio: We rely primarily on the in-to-out ratio equation in our analysis to see which cities are earning more residents by moves in than losing them via moves out: [Number of queries for moves in] ÷ [Number of queries for moves out] = [in-to-out ratio].

City level analysis: The city analysis takes into account the most recent annual data, meaning it analysis searches made in 2024, from Jan 1 through June 28. We look only at the 150 largest cities in the United States in our city-level analysis, 6 of which are omitted due to insufficient search data. Only cities with a minimum of 25 searches for moves both in and out are considered, a total of 144 cities.

Zillow Home Value data is used for understanding the home value and home value percentage increase over time.

U.S. Census data is used for population.

Full dataset for cities: