After a massive upsurge in domestic migration during the pandemic years, Americans are moving less than they used to as they worry more about the cost of living and the housing affordability crisis has left them “locked in,” new data found. A study released on Friday by the Bank of America Institute found that mobility declined across all income groups, generations and move types in the second quarter of the year, falling more sharply in the case of longer-distance relocations. Moves within the same city, however, declined at a faster rate in the second quarter of 2026 compared to a year earlier, highlighting how the high cost of housing is likely playing a key role in Americans’ decision to stay put.
Supporting this theory is the fact that Americans who do move are increasingly choosing smaller Midwestern cities, where housing is typically more affordable than in the Northeast or the coastal West. Many homeowners are locked in by the golden handcuffs of low-interest rate mortgages and do not have a motivating factor that would cause them to move, even if their home is no longer the ideal fit for them,” Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), told Newsweek. The rise of remote work during these years played a huge role in boosting the movement of Americans across state lines, which saw a particular uptick during the pandemic, allowing many to relocate to cities and states with lower taxes, cheaper housing, and often better lifestyles.
Many relocated to smaller towns close to the metropolises where they used to work, while staying within the same state. This trend—an outflow of residents from large urban centers and an inflow to suburban and rural areas, slowed in 2023-2024, “but it did not stop,” Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, told Newsweek. There are several reasons why domestic migration, however, has slowed down dramatically since the end of the pandemic.
One is the cost of housing, which has risen massively since 2019. After years of increases in home prices, borrowing costs, property taxes, homeowners association (HOA) fees, and homeowners insurance premiums, 43.5 million U.S. households were cost burdened in 2024, dedicating more than 30 percent of their income each month to housing costs, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS). That was 589,000 more than the previous year and 6.4 million more than in 2019.
Underlying these trends is the question of who is holding on to the keys, which continues to be Baby Boomers, Gen Xers and some older Millennials. Many have little need to move, except perhaps to transition to easier floorplans as they age in place,” she added. Moving often comes with a higher price tag than it used to, Lautz said, driven not only by higher mortgage interest rates but also “the sticker shock of seeing today’s listed home price after a decade or more out of the market,” she explained.
With the population getting older, and marriages and children being delayed or foregone, there are certainly numerous factors mitigating against a significant uptick in migration,” he explained. Domestic migration is unlikely to pick up to the levels it reached during the pandemic, “unless there is another massive shock...driven by changes in workplace trends, fear of the unknown, the desire to be near loved ones and historically low mortgage interest rates,” Lautz said. I don’t think wide-scale housing affordability is likely any time soon,” Evan White, co-founder and executive director of the California Policy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, told Newsweek.
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