Americans are increasingly moving to markets where they can afford to buy a house and bypassing the superstar cities that were known as launching pads for careers.

“In many states you see the same dynamic of migration to more affordable areas,” said Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, “with the shift being driven in part by a combination of existing home prices nearly doubling in the past ten years, the persistence of remote/hybrid work and a relatively strong job market.”

Lombard has reviewed recent U.S. Census data to get a better picture of migration patterns, particularly among the 20-something cohort that helps drive growth.

Meanwhile, the cities that have long attracted the most ambitious at the start of their careers — Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles — are no longer the destinations they once were.

“If you look around the country there is no metro area that has a million people that is attracting people,” Lombard said. “Look at the Bay Area. Though it has an amazing economy it is still losing people.”

Of course, the artificial intelligence boom has distorted housing prices in San Francisco and its nearby communities, with homes in the city selling in around 14 days at a median price of $1.7M over the last 3 months, up 16% since the same period last year, according to data from RedFin.

And it’s not just the top-tier cities that are losing their mojo.

“Around the country, many larger metro areas that were attracting tens of thousands of new residents, such as Denver, Seattle or Washington DC are losing residents to other parts of the country,” he added. 

The sweet spot, Lombard said, is “a few hours out from the major metro areas — these areas are becoming very attractive.”

The other change that he noted was how college markets are no longer retaining many of the graduates because prices of housing in places like Charlottesville, Va., where he lives, have risen dramatically.

“They have gotten so expensive that fewer students are staying there after graduating,” he said. “A lot of single-family residential housing does not become student housing anymore. People cashing out makes more sense.” 

The shift is noticeable in the Washington, DC, suburbs, where Loudoun County, just 25 miles northwest of the city, was one of the fastest-growing areas in the early 2000s but is losing people at about the same rate of its migration inflows, largely because it has among the highest home prices in the country.

“In recent years, many DC area workers have moved into metro areas further west, such as Hagerstown, MD-Martinsburg, WV, which attracted a record number of new residents in 2024 and Chambersburg, PA, just up Interstate 81, whose migration levels peaked last year.” Lombard wrote in an email. “You see the same pattern outside Charlotte in Hickory, NC which also reached a record level of migration last year, likely in part by attracting new residents from Charlotte which is an hour east of Hickory and Asheville which is an hour west, both metro areas have considerably higher home prices than Hickory.”

Other areas that have seen a substantial influx of people include West Virginia, Pennsylvania and eastern Tennessee. 

“The Appalachian region is pulling in an increasing number of people,” Lombard said. “The overall shift is from high-cost markets to low-cost markets.”

The Census numbers for the Appalachian region show a dramatic influx over the last decade or so. Back in 2015, the region brought in 7,000 people. That number soared to 150,000 people, and last year it hovered at 132,000. So the people are coming, a trend that Lombard first spoke to prop.text about in October of 2024. 

Part of the problem for investors is that there is not a construction industry in place to serve areas like southwest West Virginia. There is a lot of home building going on in eastern Tennessee, which is near where Dollywood is located.

In other parts of the country, once-hot places like south Florida, Maricopa County in Arizona and the Bay Area have cooled, according to Lombard. North Florida, and cities like Ocala, and the Central Valley in California are drawing residents who are looking for affordable homes.

The other drag on housing affordability is that a lot aging boomers are not downsizing or moving to independent living arrangements.

“A  lot of people are living longer and a lot of people are aging in place,” Lombard said. “A lot of housing is locked up and not as many houses are coming on the market.”

Investors should be looking to these satellite areas for opportunities and recalibrating their expectations. Atlanta, Houston and Charlotte have moved past their primes as SFR hotbeds.

Keep in mind that CNBC named Ohio the best place to do business in the country in 2026, and housing follows jobs so markets like Toledo, which has been on proptext’s radar since at least last year, may already be oversaturated.

The trick is to find the next Toledo.  

Basement life is no way to spend your thirties, Gen Z, trust us.  A recent Federal Reserve survey found almost half of adults under 30 in the US are living with a parent. The Wall Street Journal says what used to be a sign of failure now shows financial savvy “Young people say that living at home in 2026 doesn’t carry the stigma it once did because of how unaffordable life has become. About 55% of young adults who moved back home said it was out of financial necessity, according to a spring survey by financial services firm Thrivent.” Prop.text wonders if researchers will look into the link between basement life and the lack that young people are having a lot less sex than previous generations. For the economy, the lack of household formation has numerous knock-on effects, as this uncoupled generation is not furnishing new homes, buying plants to landscape them or having children that build a healthy and thriving community.

Hiding inside the housing crisis is a retirement crisis, according to The New York Times. Houses are no longer just a place to live — they are assets that homeowners expect to appreciate in value to help pay for retirement. The younger generation is hoping prices fall to more affordable levels so they can buy, but the owners are counting on higher prices to make for a more secure retirement, and this conflict pits the old against the young. This situation is a relatively new phenomenon. After World War II, a vigorous building program and the GI bill fulfilled the American dream of home ownership. As Tahra Hoops, the director of economic analysis at Chamber of Progress, put it, the postwar generation, the boomers, are “the only American cohort ever handed a starter-home ecosystem by federal policy.”

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