- NYC’s Net Population Has Been Growing For The Past Two Years
- The Population Gains Largely Came From International Migration
- Anecdotal Real Estate Broker Feedback Seeing More International Buyers Validated By Data
Before I moved to Manhattan, my Dad used to tell me that he could buy strawberries at 3 AM any time he wanted as a resident. After I moved there in 1986, I never had any urge to buy them at 3 AM, even though I love strawberries. I love to sleep more, but the potential to buy them at any hour seemed like real upside. I mean, who doesn’t want to buy them at all hours? But I digress… Yesterday, I returned from a short business trip to Miami. A friend happened to share an excellent Bloomberg piece NYC Lost $9 Billion of Income to Miami, Palm Beach in Five Years (gift link), which also shows that NYC’s net population growth has been positive for two years, counter to national (incorrect) conventional wisdom. Their report and dashboard used in the Bloomberg piece are a product of The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic think tank and watchdog. I’ve been a big fan of the CBC over the years and have worked with them in the recent past.
During the pandemic, if I only read the headlines of NYC outbound migration coverage, it felt like there would only be 11 people left in a few months. Lots of NYC residents flooded into the surrounding suburbs. I’ve always viewed the NYC to suburbs migration pattern during the pandemic as poaching from long-held patterns of city-dwellers. In other words, there has long been a steady trend of New Yorkers moving to the suburbs from the rental market, buying their first home, and starting a family. That’s what we did, and we were surrounded by our peers in Connecticut that did the same. It’s just that the pandemic compressed the next five to ten years of that migration pattern into about 6 months in 2020.
Anecdotal feedback from friends who moved to Florida was that everyone in their neighborhood came from New York. The 2020-2021 Census data was less credible due to the pandemic, so there wasn’t a data-driven understanding until now with this new CBC report.
NYC International Migration Is Driving Its Population Growth
The big concern going forward with the swing to international migration to NYC is that they tend to have less wealth, and the top 1% of NYC’s taxpayers cover 40% of income taxes. In other words, NYC lost some of its wealthier taxpayers.
NYC’s Impact On Florida Skewed Luxury
I’ve been traveling to Florida a fair amount for consulting and market-related business for the past several years, and I’ve found it hard to connect the dots about New Yorkers there. I like to quip that “New Yorkers are Florida’s new foreign buyers.” Everyone I speak with there has relocated from NYC, but NYC is now seeing a population gain. The CBC study makes sense of it. Per Bloomberg. “A net 30,000 New Yorkers fled the city for Florida’s Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties in the five years through 2022, taking with them a combined $9.2 billion in income.” The rise in wealth migration is why we’ve seen the luxury housing boom in those markets, but it looks like the NYC outbound migration traffic to Florida is winding down.
Final Thoughts
The “Stop Making Sense” reference in the title was a shoutout to the Talking Heads, a band I listened to quite a bit in the late 1970s in college (Psycho Killer) and up through the period when I moved to NYC in the mid-1980s. I still love them. A few years ago, after NYC residents had flocked to Broadway after being couped up for more than a year, I went and saw David Byrne’s American Utopia three times, which “made sense” to me. My wife and I saw a slew of Broadway shows during that period, and I finally felt more culturally satiated.
Now that this CBC study was released, the relationship between the housing markets in NYC and Florida has “started making sense.” The study makes clear why real estate agents have noticed more international housing demand despite the strong but weakening US dollar.
The Actual Final Thought – The NYC rise in population growth just went to an 11.
Did you miss the previous Housing Notes?
April 28, 2025
Damaged: A $225 Million Sale Closed In Naples As The US Loses 20% Of Its Value
Image: Wikipedia
Housing Notes Reads
- NYC Lost $9 Billion of Income to Miami, Palm Beach in Five Years [Bloomberg]
- Competitive NYC: Value Proposition Tracker [CBCNY]
- LA tests streamlined permitting process in Pacific Palisades [The Real Deal]
- Hamptons & North Fork Home Prices Reach New Highs Amid Tightest Inventory In Years [James Lane Post]
- Private listings: What NYC sellers and buyers need to know about the off-market controversy [Brick Underground]
