Name: Welcome to Texas: Thousands of folks from California, Illinois and New York moved to D-FW in 2020
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Welcome to Texas: Thousands of folks from California, Illinois and New York moved to D-FW in 2020

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3:21 PM on Apr 5, 2021 CDTDuring the pandemic, there’s been lots of chatter about people moving to North Texas from other states. But so far, there have been few hard numbers on the immigrant totals.Now a new study from commercial real estate giant CBRE confirms that thousands of people moved to Dallas-Fort Worth last year and where they came from.No surprise at the top: The largest number of new D-FW transplants came from California.In 2020, more than 16,000 people moved to North Texas from California, according to CBRE’s study of post office change of address information. California moves to D-FW were up more than 19% last year over 2019 totals.Relocations from New York had an even bigger 2020 gain, rising more than 22% last year with more than 4,500 moves.Other states that shifted thousands of workers to the D-FW area included Florida and Illinois.CBRE’s new study, “COVID-19 Impact on Resident Migration Patterns,” took a deep dive into relocation in markets across the U.S.Eric Willett, the CBRE director of research who oversaw the study, said the real estate firm tried to get a handle on where relocations were happening during the last year.“Many of the factors are really positive for the Dallas-Fort Worth metro,” Willett said. “Across the board, it has certainly accelerated the immigration to a full range of Sun Belt cities that had been magnets for talent and population for over a decade.“It’s been supercharged by the pandemic.”Willett said most of the people moving to new cities were young, talented professionals in fields that haven’t seen the huge job losses of other work sectors.“They are the people who live in Uptown and Turtle Creek,” he said. “That’s not the group that lost their jobs, but it is the group that is moving.”Moves out of markets including San Francisco, New York, Miami and Boston surged, while there were more immigrants to metro areas including Austin, Charlotte, Dallas and Phoenix, CBRE researchers found.Most of the relocations to D-FW in 2020 came from Houston, Los Angeles, Austin and New York City.Migration from San Francisco to North Texas jumped by more than 34% in 2020 compared with 2019.Several Northern California employers — including financial firm Charles Schwab Corp. — have recently shifted thousands of jobs to Texas.Moves from Chicago to D-FW also moved up during the pandemic.“The migration pattern has been in place for some time — a migration to more tax-favorable environments and certainly ones with less regulatory environments,” said Michael Caffey, CBRE’s regional president.“COVID has just accelerated that,” he said. “COVID to some degree has probably proven out the notion of potentially being able to work away from where the job might be.”Dr. Luis Torres, an economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center, said the California numbers don’t surprise him, and “New York State is probably starting from a lower base.”In 2019, most of the Texas moves came from California and Florida, Torres said.The migration to North Texas from out-of-state markets rose in 2020 even as the area lost jobs. The D-FW area had lost 116,000 jobs year over year in December as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.Greg Willett, the top economist for Richardson-based RealPage, said he understands why the moves to D-FW continued last year even though the number of jobs in the area declined.“The relationship between where we live and where we work has been loosening for a while now, and the shutdown of offices during the COVID pandemic underlined that many people can work effectively from remote locations,” Willett said. “That shift tends to drive households toward metros with comparatively affordable living costs, while it makes the country’s most expensive markets less attractive.”Dallas-Fort Worth was one of the country’s top five moving destinations in the past year, according to another new study by Zillow Group Inc. D-FW joined Phoenix, Charlotte and Austin as the hottest places for relocations.More than one in 10 Americans have moved within the last year, Zillow found. And a further large number say they are more likely to move because of the pandemic — some 2.5 million households.“The pandemic brought an acceleration of trends we were seeing in 2018 and 2019,” Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker said in the report. “More affordable, medium-sized metro areas across the Sun Belt saw significantly more people coming than going, especially from more expensive, larger cities farther north and on the coasts.“The pandemic has catalyzed purchases by millennial first-time buyers, many of whom can now work from anywhere.”Get the latest real estate news from Steve Brown and the business staff at The Dallas Morning News.By signing up you agree to our

3:21 PM on Apr 5, 2021 CDTDuring the pandemic, there’s been lots of chatter about people moving to North Texas from other states. But so far, there have been few hard numbers on the immigrant totals.Now a new study from commercial real estate giant CBRE confirms that thousands of people moved to Dallas-Fort Worth last year and where they came from.No surprise at the top: The largest number of new D-FW transplants came from California.In 2020, more than 16,000 people moved to North Texas from California, according to CBRE’s study of post office change of address information. California moves...

Welcome to Texas: Thousands of folks from California, Illinois and New York moved to D-FW in 2020

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