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TEXAS – Texas has grown nearly 16% over the past decade, according to 2020 US census data, and has attracted nearly 4 million new residents. The Lone Star State was the third largest population growth in the United States, after Utah and Idaho.
Among the new Texans are hundreds of thousands of newcomers from California, just like that state has seen a much slower rate of growth over the past decade, at just 6.1%.
What you need to know
- Californians are moving to Texas at the rate of about 82,000 per year, according to a new study analyzing US census data
- The most popular places for Californians were in the so-called Texas Triangle of Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and Houston
- The survey cited Texas’s robust economy, job opportunities and low housing costs as motivating factors for Californians moving to the Lone Star State
Nearly 700,000 Californians have moved to Texas since 2010, according to an analysis of US census data from StorageCafe, an online platform that compiles storage units across the country.
So when Californians come to Texas, where do they go?
Unsurprisingly, most of California’s transplants go to the Texas Triangle, which is the region that makes up the state’s largest metropolitan areas – Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin.
The group identified the 25 most popular routes for people leaving California to Texas by examining county-to-county migration data from the 2019 US Census.
The top travel destination for all Californians was Harris County. The Houston area was particularly popular with Los Angeles removals, which made up nearly 40% of the new Californians who moved to the city in 2019.
In fact, Angelenos dominated most of California’s moving companies to Dallas and the surrounding counties of North Texas, including Denton, Tarrant, and Collin. The Southern Californians also moved to Travis County, the second most popular county in Texas for Californians, and Bexar County, which was fifth on the list of destinations for these moving companies.
El Paso and Bell Counties were big draws for those coming from San Diego, with those counties nine and ten on the list of top destinations for Californians.
The survey suggested that Californians were primarily drawn to the Lone Star State because of their economic opportunities. In fact, many former California-based tech companies made headlines in the last year alone. Fortune 500 tech giants Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced their move to Texas last year. Then Elon Musk announced that his Tesla company would be relocating to Austin.
Real estate company CRBE and Charles Schwab recently relocated their headquarters from California to the Dallas area.
In fact, around 114 companies moved their headquarters from California to Texas between January 2018 and June 2021, according to a report by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
Texas’s growing economy and opportunities, along with a resilient workforce and zero income tax, add to the attraction of Californians to the state. The lower cost of housing compared to Golden State prices must also be a big factor for Californians looking to relocate to Texas, the StorageCafe report said.
Texas homes are 59% cheaper compared to California while offering 14% more space, the study found. For example, the average house price in Santa Clara, Silicon Valley, Northern California was 72% higher than Dallas County’s. North of Dallas, a typical Collin County house was 1,000 square feet larger than a Santa Clara County house, the study found.
A typical Dallas-Fort Worth home is 52% cheaper than Los Angeles County, resulting in a $ 438,000 list price gap, the study found.
So, will the influx of roughly 82,000 Californians into Texas over the past decade have a long-term effect?
While the Texas Republicans support the Texas government’s businessless approach, which has attracted Californians from a Democratic-run state, they certainly hope not. Texas Governor Greg Abbott ran for office in 2018 with the Don’t California My Texas campaign stickers.
Aside from “Californication” bumper stickers, the Texas Republican lawmakers appear to have ensured GOP dominance in state politics this year with the latest redistribution cards issued in the special session of the Legislature.
The new maps for the State House, Senate and Congress districts will tighten control of Republicans while reducing the political influence of black and Hispanic communities. Regarding areas Californians move into, Abbott once disagreed with the argument that more Californians moving to Texas doesn’t necessarily mean they would be liberals, and insisted that his internal polls suggested that Californians do moved to Texas, are more conservative than Texans as a whole.
The redistribution cards await Abbott’s signature.
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