For years, competitive and fast-growing, “hot” housing markets pulled in movers despite rising prices and tight supply. That pattern is now reversing—at least among households that use professional movers.
Using United Van Lines (UVL) migration data, we find that since 2022, movers have increasingly left previously hotter and less affordable metros in favor of cooler, more accessible and more affordable ones. Before the pandemic, the opposite was true.
This shift shows up consistently across metro pairs and years and suggests a meaningful change in how housing affordability weighs into the decisions of mobile households.
Although this analysis does not describe overall population migration patterns, it captures the behavior of a specific relatively higher-income segment of movers—households with flexibility, and resources. That makes the results informative for understanding marginal housing demand, even if they do not generalize to all households.
Looking only at net moves in 2025, the story appears familiar.
Among the 50 largest U.S. metros, Charlotte posted the strongest net in-migration among UVL movers, with 920 inbound moves versus 562 outbound (an inbound-to-outbound ratio of 1.64, net flow: +358). Other notable net gainers included Portland (1.54; +293), Minneapolis (1.47; +223), Raleigh (1.44; +187), and Nashville (1.39; +203).
Meanwhile, San Diego (0.53; −1,070) and New York (0.59; −1,270) saw the largest relative net losses, followed by Riverside (0.75; −188), Los Angeles (0.75; −491), and Detroit (0.75; −157). New York and Los Angeles both reached Zillow’s top-10 hottest markets list for 2026, measuring competition among potential buyers due in part to a lack of housing inventory.
These rankings align with recent narratives about population shifts away from expensive coastal metros toward interior and Sun Belt metros.
But net flows only tell part of the story.
When movers choose between two large metros, which direction do they tend to go—and how does that relate to housing market conditions?
Migration between pairs of metros helps answer this deeper question. For example, when people move between Phoenix and Denver in a given year, do more of them go from Phoenix to Denver or the other way around? And which of the two markets is hotter or less affordable at the time?
This pairwise perspective lets us focus on directional choice while holding constant factors like distance or regional proximity.
Overall, the data show a clear post-pandemic shift toward destinations that are less competitive and relatively more affordable.
Using United Van Lines flows aggregated across top-50 metro pairs, the direction of migration changes markedly between the pre-pandemic period (2018–2019) and the post-pandemic period (2024–2025).
Along the market-heat dimension — measured by the Zillow Market Heat Index — 2018–2019 saw 47,185 moves from higher-heat to lower-heat metros compared with 51,883 moves in the opposite direction, meaning 9%% fewer flows toward cooler markets.
By 2024–2025, this pattern reverses: there were 28,104 moves from higher-heat to lower-heat metros versus 24,892 moves from lower- to higher-heat metros, or 12.9% more flows toward cooler markets.
Over the course of the pandemic, long-distance movers have progressively gravitated toward markets with lower competition among buyers and greater affordability.
Zillow’s market heat index combines multiple indicators of housing market competition—including how quickly homes sell, the share of listings with price cuts —into a single measure. Higher values indicate markets where homes sell faster, competition is stronger, and buyers face greater pressure. A market can be hot because demand is stronger, supply is lower, or both.
Before the pandemic, United Van Lines movers consistently flowed into hotter housing markets.
In 2018 and 2019, moves between metro pairs were more likely to go from cooler markets toward hotter ones. Even though hot markets were getting more expensive, they continued to attract movers—likely reflecting strong labor markets, momentum, and expectations of future growth.
In short, hot markets behaved like magnets.
Starting in 2021, the directional pattern weakened. By 2022, it flipped.
From 2022 through 2025, moves between metro pairs increasingly flowed out of hotter housing markets and toward cooler ones. In the peak year of the reversal, movers were roughly 18.6% more likely to leave a hotter market than to move into it when comparing the same pair of metros. The effect persists in 2024 and 2025, though it has gradually moderated.
More United Van Lines movers are now leaving markets with lower bargaining power and relatively higher housing costs than are moving into those same regions. This pattern is directionally consistent with the Rosen–Roback notion that, over time, higher housing costs discourage net in-migration absent offsetting gains in wages or amenities.
[1] Rosen, Sherwin, “Wages-based Indexes of Urban Quality of Life,” in Peter Mieszkowski and Mahlon Straszheim, eds., Current Issues in Urban Economics, Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 74–104.
[2] Roback, Jennifer, “Wages, Rents, and the Quality of Life,” Journal of Political Economy, 1982, 90 (6), 1257–1278.