'How bad are the hurricanes?' Americans are reconsidering moving to these two red states

21 April

Hurricane Milton storm damage in Venice, Florida on October 10, 2024 (Image: Shutterstock)

The Independent reports that the states of Florida and Texas aren’t bringing in the population numbers they used to — partially thanks to climate change.

“People used to move to Florida partly because they could get a deal. Now, people can’t afford to move here,” said Bryan Carnaggio, an agent for Redfin Premier in Florida. “The first questions from out-of-staters are, ‘How bad are the hurricanes? How high are insurance rates?’”

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis often brags about the number of Sunshine State residents who have moved to his state from California.

“If you look over the last four years, we’ve witnessed a great American exodus from states governed by leftist politicians imposing leftist ideology and delivering poor results,” DeSantis said two years ago at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

But Carnaggio said natural disasters and the resulting insurance costs of climate disasters, such as hurricanes, are sending insurance premiums and HOA fees skyrocketing in both Florida and Texas.

Bustling cities like Florida’s Tampa and Texas’ Houston were once considered affordable alternatives to high-cost municipalities like San Francisco and New York, but now these sunbelt spots are also feeling the heat — and probably the storms.

Dallas and Tampa felt a drop of almost two-thirds new residents moving in, according to U.S. Census Bureau data reviewed by real estate company Redfin. Tampa had a net inflow of just over 10,000 residents in 2024 compared to 35,000 people the year before, marking the biggest slump in domestic migration of the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas. The Dallas area has lately been seeing an uptick in tornadoes, while the Tampa area was recently pummeled by Hurricane Milton last year. Houston was devastated by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm and inundated the Harris County area with roughly 50 inches of rain.

The data puts the city of Atlanta in third place in terms of migration drop, but other major areas in Florida and Texas, including Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Austin, also saw migration drops. Meanwhile, places like Minneapolis and Indianapolis are feeling a migration rise in 2024. And joining them are municipalities in the Midwest or the Northeast, which are now more appealing thanks to an absence in natural disasters inflating home and insurance costs.

Read the original Independent story here.

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