Miami is losing residents to these states, so can we stop talking about New York? | Opinion

Since the pandemic, the story of population growth in Miami — and Florida as a whole — has been that as high-tax states like New York lose rich residents to our state, we win. So, every time a billionaire buys a home in South Florida, it’s like we’ve hit a homerun.

Yes, many people relocated here from blue states in recent years and, thanks in part to that, Florida was the nation’s fastest growing state in 2022, according to the U.S. Census. (Immigration, so vilified these days, was crucial in the population boom, too).

Local and state leaders have turned this state-to-state migration phenomenon into a political narrative, where our success relies on prevailing in a red-versus-blue state battle.

But if we’re going to brag about high-net-worth individuals leaving California or New York, we should be also talking about states such as Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, where some Miami-Dade residents are moving, according to IRS data. Those are red or purple states that, like Florida, have lower taxes but also have lower housing costs middle and working-class families can afford.

As the Miami Herald Editorial Board previously reported, between 2020 and 2025, more people left Miami-Dade for other parts of Florida and the U.S. than moved here from those places, according to research by Florida International University based on U.S. Census figures. The county’s population still grew during that period but mostly because of international migration, which has slowed down amid President Trump’s crackdown.

Our region has banked its fortunes on perpetual growth to stimulate crucial industries like real estate construction and services, and the influx of wealth into the county has, no doubt, helped the local economy. For example, billionaire Ken Griffin, who bought a home on Miami Beach’s Star Island in 2021, is relocating his hedge fund, Citadel, to Brickell from Chicago.

But there’s the flip side: If this growth doesn’t translate into enough high-paying jobs to help the non-wealthy afford a higher cost of living, then we have a problem.

It’s hard to tell exactly where each person who left Miami-Dade has gone in the past six years. The IRS keeps track of changes of address on tax returns, but the most recent available data covers 2021-23. But even that narrow data set shows a pattern:

The county had a positive net migration from New York, California and greater Chicago, and the people who moved here tended to earn more money than those leaving.

Most people who left Miami-Dade moved to other parts of Florida, especially Broward and Palm Beach counties. But the county also lost residents to other states such as Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, near Houston.

At the state level, a similar pattern has started to take shape. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Florida “residents in their prime working years are heading to other states,” often because of affordability concerns. The state’s net domestic migration — the number of arrivals from within the U.S. minus the number of departures — has slowed down. Like Miami, other metro areas, such as Orlando, experienced net losses of domestic migrants in 2024.

It’s easy to understand why that’s happening. The median sale price of a single-family home in Miami-Dade in February was $685,000, according to Miami Realtors. In Houston, it was $322,000, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.

Texas has done “some pretty radical things” to create cheaper housing with different laws on minimum lot sizes and zoning regulations, former Florida Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes, now head of the Florida Policy Project, told the Herald Editorial Board. Texas also has a lot more land to build on than peninsular Florida.

“We’re competing nationally with markets that have lower cost housing, where families can afford to move, where they can find jobs,” Brandes said.

For all the buzz about Miami-Dade and Florida becoming a haven for the affluent fleeing liberal coastal cities, it’s time to look beyond the blue-versus-red narrative. If we’re going to compete with other states, let’s add southern states to the list.

When residents leave our region, they aren’t seeing political lines but quality of life — and many no longer feel that’s within reach in South Florida.