AUSTIN, Texas — Despite the cooling of our local housing market, data from U-Haul says Texas is still a hot spot for movers.
For the third year in a row, Texas took the top spot in the moving company's "growth index," which looks at one-way trips for moving trucks. Florida and the Carolinas were also high on the list.
The states seeing the most people leaving were Massachusetts and California.
According to the release, the data is put together from more than 2.5 million one-way U-Haul truck transactions across the U.S. and Canada.
U-Haul reported that "do-it-yourself" movers arriving in the state accounted for nearly 50.4% of all one-way U-Haul traffic in and out of Texas, keeping the state as the one leading in growth.
Texas was also the top growth state from 2016-2018 and again in 2021 and 2022. It ranked second to Florida in 2019 and second to Tennessee in 2020.
In 2022 and again last year, Florida claimed the No. 2 spot and has been a top-four growth state nine years in a row, per the release. North Carolina and South Carolina claimed the third and fourth spots, respectively.
“While one-way transactions in 2023 remained below the record-breaking levels we witnessed immediately following the pandemic, we continued to see many of the same geographical trends from U-Haul customers moving between states,” said John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president. “Migration to states in the Southeast and Southwest is still very pronounced. Demand for one-way equipment out of certain markets in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast mirrors what we have seen during recent moving cycles.”
New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois and California were the bottom five states for growth in 2023.
The moving company added that U-Haul migration trends don't necessarily correlate directly to population or economic growth, but that it remains an effective gauge of how states and cities attract and maintain residents.