Over a five-year span, about 30,000 New Yorkers made a move to Florida — specifically Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties — taking $9.2 billion in total income with them.
As first reported by Bloomberg, a new analysis by the non-profit fiscal monitoring group Citizens Budget Commission looked at migration data from 2018 to 2022, with New Yorkers mostly driven by lower taxes and a better overall quality of life. The two Florida counties saw an influx of households earning well above six figures.
Net number of individuals who moved from NYC to South Florida between 2018 and 2022
- Miami-Dade: 26,236 people with a per capita income of $266,401 (total adjusted gross income of $7B)
- Palm Beach: 19,541 people with a per capital income of $189,144 (total adjusted gross income of $3.7B)
This influx of buyers resulted in soaring home prices, per Realtor.com research. In the 12 months through May 2021, median home list prices per square foot rose 28% in Miami-Dade and a whopping 45% in Palm Beach.
According to the Citizens Budget Commission report, New York City’s population started to decline in 2017 and then plummeted during the pandemic by nearly a half-million between April 2020 and July 2022. However, the Big Apple has seen a population increase in both 2023 and 2024, indicating a shift from the pandemic-related drop.
Notably, not everyone who left the city during that timeframe strayed far. Nearly 138,000 New Yorkers relocated to Long Island, resulting in a combined loss of $11.1 billion in adjusted gross income. Meanwhile, Westchester County received almost 60,000 residents, reducing the city’s adjusted gross income by $5 billion.
You can read the full report here.