Why people are souring on one of the country’s hottest housing markets

Cindy, a 50-year-old small-business owner who’s lived in Florida for most of her life, says she and her husband are starting to sour on life in the Sunshine state. The summers are extremely hot and muggy, prices have climbed, and the crowds have gotten worse, she said. Cindy noted that the commute from her suburban area to downtown Tampa has more than doubled over the past few years.

Now, with most of their adult children out of the house, she and her husband are seriously considering packing their bags and moving out of state. More than likely, they’ll be gone within the next 10 years, she said, adding that her business was one of the last remaining things that kept her tied to the area.

“It’s funny. I know most people retire to Florida, but we’re hoping to retire away from Florida,” she told B-17.

Cindy’s experience isn’t actually all that unique. Florida was one of the epicenters of the pandemic’s great migration, but while crowds of people are trying to settle into places like Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville, many Floridians want to dump their homes and get out.

The exodus is mainly being driven by higher housing costs, a higher cost of living, and souring attitudes toward the influx of people who moved to Florida in recent years. Those factors combined are making daily life in the state way more difficult, current and former Florida residents said.

While 730,000 people moved to Florida during 2021 and 2022, nearly half a million people left, according to US Census data.

The state, meanwhile, just lost its status as the most moved-to region this year, according to an analysis conducted by the Florida-based moving service PODS. South Florida, in particular, ranked among the regions people were most keen to move out of, the report said.

Waning enthusiasm for the state is evident in housing activity, which has fallen from its pandemic highs. The number of homes for sale in Florida has soared 42% compared to levels last year, according to Redfin.

Many people looking to sell add that they’re looking to leave the county, or possibly move out of state, according to Rafael Corrales, a Redfin agent based in Miami.

Buyers are also getting cold feet. In Orlando, Jacksonville, and Tampa — three metros that boomed during the pandemic — 21% of home purchase agreements fell through in June, Redfin data shows.

“They’re just being a little more cautious now,” Corrales said, pointing to affordability concerns. “There’s issues that were normally acceptable for a buyer, they’re no longer acceptable anymore because it’s money and it’s a lot of money.”

Kevin, a 36-year-old software engineer, is among the sellers who recently left. He and his wife traded their life in St. Pete, Florida to move to Seattle about a year ago. They have no regrets, and never plan on moving back to the state, he told B-17.

“If you would have called me five years ago, I would have vastly different answers to this,” Kevin said. “The cost of living hadn’t gone up and just the past five, six years, it’s gotten crazy down there. I used to love Florida five years ago. I never imagined leaving Florida, but things have changed.”

Temperature change

Attitudes appear to be different than even just a few years ago, when pandemic transplants altered the state’s reputation as more than just America’s biggest retirement destination.

Bill McBride notes that booms and busts are part of the housing cycle, and the housing forecaster thinks some areas of Florida could see an exodus of people in the coming decade.

While people were likely attracted to Florida for its balmy weather and cheaper housing relative to expensive cities like New York, homeowners in the state are feeling exhausted by extreme weather, which is pushing up the cost of homeowners insurance and homeowner association fees, McBride told B-17.

More than three quarters of homeowners in Florida said their home insurance premiums have risen in the past year, according to a Redfin survey. Property insurance costs in the state are rising at the fastest pace in 20 years, according to Capital Economics.

According to Cindy, her home insurance costs around $8,000 a year. That’s actually better than the state average, with the typical household paying over $10,000 for home insurance in 2023, according to data from Insurify.

“It’s insane. It’s craziness how much more we’re paying for homeowners’ insurance, and I think that’s pretty common across the whole state right now. Everyone is having issues with that,” she said.

The cost of living has also risen, in part due to rising housing costs and more people living in the city. Consumer prices in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach areas of Florida are up around 30% since February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices in Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater areas, meanwhile, are up 25% since the pandemic.

Home prices have accounted for a big portion of that increase. The median home in Florida now costs $409,700, up by about 55% from the median house price recorded in February 2023, Redfin data shows.

“I think one of the main draws of Florida has always been that it’s cheaper,” Darryl Fairweather, the chief economist of Redfin, said, pointing to the wave of newcomers who flooded in from high-cost areas, like New York and Washington DC.

“Eventually the affordability just becomes so bad that people can’t put up with it anymore.”

The hoards of people who moved to Florida during the pandemic are part of the problem, Kevin and Cindy said, describing a more tense political climate and increased violence in some areas.

Florida saw an increase in most types of offenses in 2023 compared to the prior year. Simple assaults shot up 66% compared to 2021, while aggravated assaults jumped 65%, according to data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

“So it was probably 2020 that I was like, yeah, time to go get out of here,” Kevin said.

Florida will probably still be attractive to some older people, who are flush with cash and are not as concerned by the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, McBride and Fairweather say.

But for the most part, McBride expects people to begin turning away from and also leaving the Sunshine State. Some communities near Florida’s coastline could become “ghost towns” in as soon as 50 years, he speculated, as climate change will make them uninhabitable.

The state probably won’t be considered a retirement haven by the time millennials exit the workforce, Fairweather added.

“Will it still attract people? I think so,” McBride said. “[But] I wouldn’t live there.”