In 2022, Kellee Speakman, who was born and raised in California, began to dream about living in Texas.
The elementary school teacher, 50 years old, who calls herself a conservative, was angry about California’s COVID-19 laws and interested in how Texans were happily showing off their “freedoms,” Speakman told Business Insider earlier this year.
Thus, Speakman and her family packed their things and moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area in January 2022.
But it only took Speakman four months to start making plans to move back to California. She said that the politics and higher cost of living in Texas were the main reasons for her decision.
“In Texas, I was really sad.” “I was always daydreaming about home,” Speakman said.
By summer, the family was back in California.
In the past few years, Speakman and her family have been a part of both the movement out of California and the movement into the state.
Californians are still leaving.
It’s time to talk about the numbers.
A lot of people moved to or from California between 2022 and 2023. More than 690,100 people left California for another state, and just over 422,000 people came to California from other parts of the US. The information comes from the American Community Survey and includes answers to questions about how people move around.
During this time, there were fewer net movements than the same time last year, when about 818,000 people left and 475,800 moved in.
Texas is still the best place for people from California who want to move to a better place.
Between 2022 and 2023, almost 94,000 people who used to live in California moved to Texas. This is less than the 108,000 people who moved between 2020 and 2021 and more than 102,000 people who moved the previous year. At the same time, though, just over 38,700 people moved from Texas to California.
It was also between 2022 and 2023 that about 54,200 people left California for Arizona. This was less than the 74,100 people who left the previous year. Californians were also very interested in moving to Nevada and Washington, with each state getting over 40,000 people.
The number of people moving from California to Florida also went down, from 50,700 the year before to 39,000.
Californians go to Texas to find cheap prices
BI has talked to a lot of people going from California to Texas in the past year about why they are moving.
Some said it was because of politics or job chances, while others said it was because rising costs made living in California’s big cities unaffordable, so they looked for a quieter, cheaper suburb in Texas.
A business owner named Jeffrey Vonderhaar told BI earlier this year that he was going to move from Calabasas, California, to a neighborhood outside of Houston.
VonderHaar said he was leaving California after 26 years because the rules, taxes, and high cost of things were making it harder to run his business and pay for his daily needs.
He told BI in February, “In California, there are so many rules and laws that change all the time.” “The taxes are never-ending.”
He said that he thought Texas was a lot better for business. His plan is to keep his business in California, where he doesn’t see much growth, but he wants to make it bigger in Texas.
He and his family were able to buy a bigger house on four acres of land for $1.275 million after moving to Texas.
Michelle Clifford, a 33-year-old sales manager, told BI that moving from California to Texas in July helped her and her husband buy their first home, which has given them and their kids a way of life they thought was impossible before.
They live in Celina, a town north of Dallas that is growing quickly. They paid about $600,000 for a 2,400-square-foot house on an acre of land there.
“I’ve been renting or moving almost every year since I was 18,” he said. “Having something that is finally mine is the best feeling in the world.” The best thing about Celina is that I know my girls will have room to run around.
From where people are going to California
There were not as many people moving to California between 2022 and 2023 as there were between 2021 and 2022, but the Golden State is still very appealing.
From 2022 to 2023, the most-used moving path was from Texas to California. Census records show that 38,732 people moved to California during this time.
About 35,000 people took the road from New York to California, which was the second most popular. Washington came in close behind, with about 32,200 moves.
Nevada and Oregon sent about 22,200 people to California, while Arizona and Illinois lost over 21,000 people to California.
In November, Abby Raisz, Senior Research Manager at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, told CBS News that work opportunities are one reason why so many people are moving from Texas to California.
Raisz said that many workers who worked from home during the pandemic are coming back to California now that work is back to normal. Also, more tech jobs have opened up.
Raisz said, “It’s not just workers coming back.”
“It’s new jobs being created in some of these burgeoning industries like AI,” she said. “The Bay Area remains this epicenter of innovation when it comes to tech.”
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