Fort Lauderdale<\/a> as one of its top move-in destinations.<\/p>\n\u201cThey\u2019re like salmon swimming upstream,\u201d Michael Pappas, CEO of The Keyes Company, said of people migrating out of Miami-Dade. \u201cThere is no question there is a northerly move. They used to move from Dade to Broward. That was the normal path. The first expansion was after Hurricane Andrew.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPalm Beach has gotten to be such a high-priced market they\u2019re jumping to Martin and Port St. Lucie,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Sellers in the Miami-Dade suburb of Kendall with homes worth\u00a0 $700,000 to $800,000 \u201ccan buy a home in Port St. Lucie for half the cost,\u201d Pappas said.<\/p>\n
Other homebuyers seem to have caught on. The Census Bureau estimates showed St. Lucie County with a gain of 10,847 to 402,449 in the 2024-2025 period. Martin County saw an increase of 1,070 to 166,272.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are actually seeing a population drop in Broward now because people are being forced into Stuart and Port St. Lucie,\u201d said Nick Miceli, regional president, Southeast Metro, at TD Bank, which has 348 locations in Florida. \u201cThe construction there continues to be pretty robust for affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Census-Population_Estimates_27418.jpg\")
The Miami skyline is viewed from the Rickenbacker Causeway in 2023, when Florida was among the fastest-growing states in the U.S. But now, growth is slowing and Miami-Dade County was among those nationally that experienced a fallback in population, according to Census Bureau estimates for July 1, 2024, to July 1, 2025. (Pedro Portal\/The Miami Herald)
\nIn search of affordability<\/p>\n
Dr. Ned Murray, associate director of the Jorge M. Perez Metropolitan Center at Florida International University, said the slowing of Southeast Florida population growth has become more profound for a state reputed to be a preferred destination for relocating families, individuals and businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in the last few years, it\u2019s been quite remarkable,\u201d he said. \u201cEveryone is tuned in to the cost of living right now. You are looking for markets that are more affordable and where jobs are abundant and there are competitive wages.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Census Bureau estimate for 2025, he said, is a reflection of \u201ceverything we\u2019ve been seeing trending in that direction since 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s particularly true for the loss of younger work force members from the ages of 20 to 29. \u201cOur primary working age population is who we\u2019re losing the most,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
For Murray, the population movements in South Florida since 2022 have produced three takeaways:<\/p>\n
Federal tax law changes passed in 2017 that allowed the deductability of state and local taxes in places like the Northeast drove out high-income earners from their home states.
\nInbound migrants are less challenged by rising housing and insurance costs while incumbents \u201care being priced out.\u201d
\nThe migration of higher earning residents will grow local economies, \u201cbut will exacerbate affordability issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slide in domestic migration<\/p>\n
Murray also noted that while all three major South Florida counties had \u201cpositive international net migration between 2020 and 2023,\u201d\u00a0 domestic migration was down 153,950, with Miami-Dade having \u201cthe greatest loss in population.\u201d<\/p>\n
A net domestic loss in migration means the number of people leaving is exceeding the numbers arriving in the community. It does not include international migrants who arrive from other countries.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Miami-Dade had a domestic loss of more than 134,000, with Broward down by nearly 40,000. But Palm Beach County had a gain of nearly 20,400, according to figures provided by FIU. The state of Florida for that year had a gain of 818,762.<\/p>\n
The decline in domestic migration noted by Murray appears to be continuing. The Census Bureau\u00a0 estimates determined that all three of South Florida\u2019s big counties had negative domestic migration figures for the 2024-2025 period.<\/p>\n
Population growth through foreign immigration is also showing signs of a slowdown, said Miceli of TD Bank.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are also the changes in immigration law that have resulted in fewer individuals being able to establish themselves here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing that even in account openings with that first-time account holder. The volumes are down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Economy will still grow, but more slowly<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no doubt that the cost of living is an issue,\u201d Jeffrey Kottkamp, CEO of Florida Tax Watch, said in a telephone interview. \u201cMiami is becoming an even more dynamic international city and with that, obviously, the cost of living keeps going up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur long-term economic forecast is that we will continue to grow at a slower pace,\u201d he added. \u201cWe will see wages continue to grow and unemployment is going to hold pretty steady. I think these [population] decreases are temporary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miceli said his bank has seen strength in Small Business Administration loans for operators in manufacturing, exporting and other fields.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the uninspiring Census figures don\u2019t appear to reflect a dampened desire of out-of-state companies to relocate and build a presence in South Florida.<\/p>\n
In February, Palantir Technologies announced it moved its corporate headquarters from Denver to Aventura in northeast Miami-Dade, just south of the Broward County line.<\/p>\n
Ken Griffin, who moved his Citadel and Citadel Securities financial firms to Miami from Chicago in 2022, has been an ardent promoter of doing business in the city, committing millions to the construction of a 54-story high rise that will serve as the firms\u2019 headquarters. Between them, the firms employ 500 people.<\/p>\n
Asked about the future of the region given the population movement, a spokesperson referred a reporter to a recent profile of Griffin\u2019s firms in Fortune magazine, which named them to its \u201c100 Best Companies to Work For\u201d list.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re constructing an iconic office building for this century, right here in Miami, in the free state of Florida, on the water,\u201d Griffin said in a profile article. \u201cAnd people from some of the biggest tech companies in the world who\u2019ve seen the design are saying, \u2018We want to be there!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the son of real estate professionals Cheryl Rubman and her husband, Jeff, arrived in South Florida from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3337,506,558,740,28,30,29,249,266,123,373,115,557,109,4556],"class_list":{"0":"post-220357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-boca-raton","9":"tag-broward-county","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-florida","13":"tag-florida-headlines","14":"tag-florida-news","15":"tag-fort-lauderdale","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-miami","18":"tag-miami-dade-county","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-palm-beach-county","21":"tag-social","22":"tag-west-palm-beach"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}