Fewer East Coast Movers Are Choosing Miami as Costs Climb
Fewer East Coast home shoppers are setting their sights on Miami, and the reason is the same one that used to bring them here: cost.
About 201,000 people moved to Florida from other states last year, roughly 551 a day, according to the University of Florida’s Shimberg Center for Housing Studies. At the 2022 peak, it was nearly 599,000, or about 1,640 a day. Once you subtract the people who left, the state’s net gain from domestic migration was just over 22,500 last year, down 93% from 2022, according to a Realtor.com analysis of Census data. The Miami-Dade area led the state in people moving out to other counties and states in 2025, losing nearly 73,000 residents.
Online home shopping shows the same shift. New York City shoppers made up just 11% of out-of-town traffic to Miami listings on Realtor.com this fall, roughly a third of their share at the 2023 peak. The founder of a Boston-based brokerage told Realtor.com that his firm’s top outgoing market is now Central Florida, because clients have been priced out of South Florida.
The cost gap that drove the pandemic wave has closed. The Miami metro, which includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, now has the second-highest cost of living in the country behind San Francisco, ahead of New York and Los Angeles, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. This month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that a household earning the region’s median income of about $85,500 would need to spend 60% of it to own the median-priced home of about $534,000. To keep housing costs under the recommended 30% of income, that household would need to earn about $171,000 a year.
Insurance, property taxes and HOA fees are a big part of that math. Together they rose 150% over the last decade across the metro, according to the Atlanta Fed, though they dipped slightly over the past year.
What’s changing is who makes the move. Lower- and middle-income households are the ones dropping out, while demand at the top hasn’t slowed. Miami ended 2025 with 10,513 active listings priced at $1 million or more, more than New York’s 9,216, according to Realtor.com. A Realtor.com economist told Newsweek that Florida’s lack of a state income tax and estate tax matters more the higher your income, while costs like insurance matter less.
My take
I moved here from New Jersey myself, so I’ve seen this from both sides.
The headlines say people stopped moving to South Florida. That’s not what the numbers say. They say people stopped moving here to save money. If your plan was to sell up north and live the same life here for less, that plan doesn’t work in Miami anymore. And these numbers cover the whole metro, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm included.
The people still coming have a reason that holds up when costs rise: a job, a company relocation, or an income high enough that no state income tax actually changes the math. If that’s you, the move can still make sense. Just run the full numbers before you fall in love with a house: insurance, property taxes and HOA fees, not just the price.
There is one upside. With fewer middle-market buyers coming from out of town, the middle of the market has softened. That can mean more room to negotiate than buyers had in 2021 or 2022.
Sources:
