More Wealthy Americans Are Moving To Florida, Leaving New York And California

With the latest rise in interest rates, the idea of moving requires serious thought. Giving up a low interest mortgage and buying a house at double the rate is an expensive proposition. That is, unless you make serious money and don't need a mortgage. Although interest rates and housing costs may be putting a damper on regular folks moving to the Sunshine state, wealthy Americans moving to Florida seems to be unbothered.

I do love charts, so here's a look at the Top 5.

And here's the Bottom 5, the states where high earning people were leaving.

While Florida gained over 27,000 high earning individuals, California lost almost as many. Seeing the rest of the list, this also shows why we see so many New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts license plates around Southwest Florida.

The wealthy moving to Florida to escape state taxes is nothing new. Now there's also a tremendous difference in political leadership. I'm not getting into that. 

What we really need is construction workers moving here to help alleviate the housing shortage. How do we make that happen?

In a new report released today by WalletHub, Cape Coral ranks near the top of the "2023’s Best & Worst Cities for First Time Home Buyers." Even with the rapidly rising prices and the yearly threat of being wiped out by a hurricane. Wells running dry and people on bikes being run down. And Nile Monitor lizards. And that when you drive over the bridge and don't have a transponder it's now $5 because of the service charge. I just wanted a pizza. Despite all this. It's still a great option for first time home buyers that can afford it.

Another study that may factor in on Cape Coral's attractiveness to home ownership was this one. "Renting A House Is Cheaper Than Buying For Most Of The County – Except in Cape Coral". That's a piece we did back in March that showed the two markets in the country where this was true. Cape Coral, Florida and Springfield, Massachusetts. And now to the sudy.

In 2022, 26% of home purchases were made by first-time buyers.

Often, people begin searching for their dream homes without a realistic idea of market prices. Factor in interest rates or even their eligibility to get a mortgage.

Where a home is located is just as important as what features it has. If the neighborhood is unpleasant, it can sour the experience of a great home. Potential buyers may want to narrow their search down to an area with a good reputation before getting into housing details.

To simplify the process, WalletHub compared 300 cities of varying sizes across 22 key indicators of market attractiveness, affordability and quality of life. The data set ranges from cost of living to real-estate taxes to property-crime rate.

An interesting stat here. Even with our home prices, Florida ranks tops in large, medium, and small cities. Breaking it down into city size, you see a lot of Florida in here.

To see the full study + expanded tables, check out WalletHub.

To determine the most favorable housing markets for first-time home buyers, WalletHub compared a sample of 300 U.S. cities (varying in size) across three key dimensions: 1) Affordability, 2) Real-Estate Market and 3) Quality of Life.

We evaluated those dimensions using 22 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for first-time home buyers. Data for metrics marked with an asterisk (*) were available at the state level only.

Finally, we determined each city’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample. Our sample considers only the city proper in each case and excludes cities in the surrounding metro area. Each city was categorized according to the following population-size guidelines:

Sources: Data used to create this ranking were collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Council for Community and Economic Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Insurance Information Institute, The National Association of Realtors, ATTOM, a property data provider, and WalletHub research.