Redfin: Here are the top 10 U.S. cities everyone wants to move to

Americans have been itching to move in the new era of remote and hybrid work, and a new Redfin study shows the urge is as strong as it has been in the past few years.

Nearly one-third of the real estate brokerage firm’s users reported that they were looking to move away from their hometowns, according to a nationwide survey by the company, significantly higher than the 26% of users who were looking to relocate in January 2019.

Redfin’s newest migration analysis, from the fourth quarter of 2021, collected data from around 2 million people who searched for at least 10 new homes in specific metro areas. There were 10 cities that stood out in terms of inbound search activity, Redfin said.

In terms of most popular states, Florida stands out as the clear winner, with Miami taking the top spot of the ranking, and Tampa, Cape Coral, and North Port appearing in the top 10. Here are the top 10 places where Americans are considering moving:

1. Miami
2. Phoenix
3. Las Vegas
4. Sacramento
5. Tampa
6. Dallas
7. Cape Coral, Fla.
8. North Port, Fla.
9. San Antonio
10. Atlanta

The city with the biggest influx of search interest is Miami, and fast on its heels are a number of Sun Belt cities farther west: Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Sacramento.

The biggest takeaway is that people do not consider job markets a priority when looking to move. People who are getting fed up with overly expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are moving to sunnier and more affordable locations.

Some of the states topping the ranking, such as Texas and Arizona, have had some of the country’s fastest job and population growth in recent years, as more and more people have decided to move away from costly and cramped coastal cities. 

Several cities on the list, like top-ranked Miami, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, have been actively rebranding themselves as the country’s new tech hotspots. These cities are looking to attract workers who would have been traditionally drawn to places like Silicon Valley, as job markets in data science, software development, IT, and blockchain-related professions start to explode.

But some of these housing markets are already buckling under the weight. New-home prices in Las Vegas, for instance, have tripled over the past 10 years, and the city’s housing costs are currently some of the fastest-rising in the country.