According to a study from Commercial Café, a commercial real estate blog, “More than 45 million Americans changed residences between 2017 and 2018, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. This means that more than 14% of the total U.S. population moved in the course of a single year. Migration has been a defining characteristic of Americans since the frontier expansion; nowadays, Americans move more often than most people in the world.
Many of the shifts in population within U.S. borders can be attributed to residents moving from one Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) to another. To see which metros are the most popular destinations, we analyzed net population gains through metro-to-metro migration for U.S. cities and their respective MSAs. We used U.S. Census estimates for 2013-2017, the latest data released as of August 2019.”
The top 10 metro areas for metro-to-metro migration were:
1. Phoenix
2. Inland Empire
3. Houston
4. Dallas – Fort Worth
5. Austin
6. Orlando
7. Charlotte
8. Las Vegas
9. Nashville
10. Tampa
According to Commercial Café, “Houston rounds out the podium for net metro-to-metro migration. On average, it gained 32,821 residents per year from other U.S. metros. Texas sees a lot of intra-state migration. The biggest sources of new residents for Houston—as well as the three most popular destinations for people moving out of Houston—are the three other large metros in the state—Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. Houston comes out even in most of these population exchanges, except for the Austin metro, which gains far more residents than it loses to Bayou City.”
Commercial Café continues by stating in the study, “Among the three Texas metros on our list, Houston saw the largest population increase through metro-to-metro migration. This growth is visible in Space City’s many business districts, which added almost 18 million square feet of office space between 2013 and 2017, according to Yardi Matrix data. This amount surpasses that of any other metro in the top 10. The Houston housing market is also on the upswing. The number of housing units here increased by an average of 2.1%—or 52,841 units—each year. Furthermore, the healthcare sector provides Houston with a steady flow of income and job openings, and the city is home to the largest medical complex in the world, according to the institution’s website. Houston’s port is also among the busiest in the U.S. by international waterborne tonnage, and the oil industry is booming. Considering these factors, it’s easy to see why Houston is flourishing.”
