For years, states like Florida and Texas were magnets for movers chasing sunshine, space and affordable living. But in 2025, the national moving trend has shifted. Americans are staying put—and even the hottest states are cooling off.
Domestic migration—moving from one state to another—has hit a historic low. According to the latest housing report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, just 8.3-percent of households relocated in the past year. That’s not only the lowest rate since the 1970s, it’s a sign of a broader slowdown in how Americans are reshaping the map.
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Florida and Texas still rank among the top states for incoming residents, but their growth has seriously tapered. Florida, once welcoming droves of new arrivals, peaked in 2022 with a migration rate of 14.2. Now it’s just 2.7. Texas saw a similar dip, falling to 2.8 after several years of steady gains. North Carolina and Tennessee, other Southern favorites, also saw migration drops of 17-percent and 20-percent, respectively. Idaho, Nevada and Tennessee, on the other hand, are seeing gains. See the interactive map here.
The report points to housing costs for the slowdown. Back in 2019, a typical home cost just over $313,000. Today, that price is pushing $417,000. Add in mortgage rates hovering around 7-percent, and the math just doesn’t work for many would-be movers. The dream of relocating to a more affordable state has become too expensive to chase.
Remote work once sparked a mass exodus from pricey coastal cities to smaller, cheaper metros. But now, return-to-office policies are dragging people back to cities like New York and San Francisco—or at least keeping them from leaving in the first place. California’s outflow shrank by 30-percent in 2024. New York’s losses have dropped more than half since 2022.
The housing market is in flux, but according to the report Americans are hitting the pause button on big moves. Migration patterns may not be frozen forever, but as housing prices and job demands shift, fewer people are crossing state lines. For the first time in a long time, staying put is the new trend.