AUSTIN, Texas — It's no surprise that more Californians are moving to Texas.
But experts say one thing that could slow down this migration is if home prices in Texas continue to increase. According to Zillow housing data, the median home value in Texas has risen 54% over the past five years.
"That'll be dependent upon the price of homes and taxation policies. That's a big key," said Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix.
A study from StorageCafe used data from analyzing the migration of Californians to Texas from 2017-2021. It found 111,000 people moved from California to Texas in 2021, which is equal to 300 people per day. That’s an 80% increase from 2012 figures.
Around 46% of transplants were millennials with above-average incomes. Ressler said because most of them work in the tech field and have a high income, they can afford to move.
"Do they have the ability to move? $100k a year says, ‘Yeah, you can hire U-Haul or whoever to be able to move you,’” Ressler said. "Also, you're in a position of where you work jobs to be able to change jobs or move jobs."
That is one reason why Austin is one of the major Texas cities seeing large growth recently.
"Austin has always been a magnet, especially one for the large tech industries,” Ressler said.
He said having tech hubs in Austin will create more jobs, and that will in turn lead to more affordable housing people want to migrate to.
"What is being looked at in various cities and states and counties is the ability to be able to build affordable housing, so that it pencils out in terms of development," Ressler said. "One of the things that will determine that is the amount of jobs and the amount of new technology hubs or jobs that will bring higher wages and what we call 'magnifier effect.'"
He said the magnifier effect is when you hire one manufacturing type of employee that would create four or five jobs.
But if those tech companies stop moving here, or jobs get replaced by technology or artificial intelligence, it could end up slowing migration.
"Tech is already experiencing a little bit of the downturn in terms of job loss," Ressler said. "If that continues and is amplified by any kind of recessionary impact based on what the Fed does in interest rates, then that would have an impact to one of the migration paths."
The study also highlighted the top moving routes. The top of the list was Los Angeles to Travis County with 3,477 move-ins. San Mateo to Travis County was ranked at No. 2 in terms of homebuying savings. The median home price difference between the counties was 243%, with a San Mateo home averaging $1,799,000 and a Travis County home averaging $525,000.
The StorageCafe study used data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), that provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. The study also used data from Point2 listings from April 2023 on median home prices in California and Texas counties.
Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.