Housing analyst Nicholas Gerli says a new Bank of America report is showing a major shift in where Americans are moving, and the data could reshape local housing markets for years.
In a video for Reventure Consulting, Gerli said the Bank of America Institute used internal account and spending data to track migration patterns across the country. What it found, he said, was a sharp reversal from the pandemic-era housing boom.
Florida’s migration engine is slowing fast, while several more affordable metros are now attracting more movers.
“Bank of America just dropped another bombshell report on the U.S. housing market,” Gerli said.
According to Gerli, the big story is not only that fewer people are moving to Florida. It is that Americans who are moving appear to be choosing places where rent and home prices make more sense.
Florida’s Pandemic Boom Is Fading
Gerli said Florida cities such as Miami, Orlando, and Tampa showed some of the largest net move-outs and population losses in the first quarter of 2026, based on Bank of America’s data.
That marks a major change from the pandemic years, when Florida became one of the country’s biggest migration winners.
“If you think about Florida for a second, this was a market that thrived on people moving in,” Gerli said.
He said buyers moving from places such as New York and California helped push Florida prices higher during the boom. Now, he argued, that demand is weakening.
“The people moving in from New York and California pushed the prices up,” Gerli said. “Well, now they’re leaving.”
Gerli said home values in Florida are down 3.7% over the last year, and he noted that roughly 14 or 15 states are already seeing year-over-year declines in home values. Many of those states, he said, are in the Sun Belt and Mountain West, two regions that saw big pandemic-era price jumps.
That does not mean Florida has suddenly become cheap. Gerli stressed that prices are still high, and in many places they have not fallen enough to pull buyers back in a meaningful way.
But the direction has changed, and that matters.
Americans Are Moving Less Overall
Gerli said the Bank of America data also showed a broader slowdown in movement across the country.
The turnover rate of renters and homeowners moving has dropped by about 10% to 15% over the past two years, he said. Renters, according to Gerli, are moving even less than homeowners.
“More and more people seem comfortable in their current living situation,” he said.
He argued that after the pandemic, many Americans appear tired of big cross-country moves. In 2021 and 2022, long-distance relocation became a national trend, with remote work and lifestyle changes pushing people into new states and metros.
But by 2026, Gerli said, that behavior has cooled.
The Bank of America data showed that moves to different states or metro areas have fallen more sharply than moves within the same metro. People may still be changing apartments, neighborhoods, or suburbs, but fewer are packing up for a totally different city.
That is a problem for markets that rely on constant inflows of new residents. Florida’s housing boom, in particular, depended heavily on that stream of incoming buyers and renters.
When that stream slows, housing demand changes.
Affordable Metros Are Winning
While Florida is losing momentum, Gerli said a different group of cities is gaining.
He said Bank of America’s data showed Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Columbus, Louisville, and Minneapolis among the metros seeing the strongest population gains in early 2026.
These are not all the flashy pandemic boomtowns that dominated housing headlines a few years ago. Gerli called them more traditional, stable, and often under-the-radar markets.
“We’re seeing a shift away from some of those pandemic boomtowns more to the traditional stable markets around the U.S.,” he said.
Gerli argued that affordability is the common thread.
Using his Reventure App metric of rent as a percentage of income, he said many of the metros gaining residents are among the most affordable large markets for renters. Salt Lake City and Raleigh, for example, ranked near the top in rent affordability among metros with more than 1 million people, according to Gerli’s analysis.
Minneapolis, Columbus, Louisville, and Indianapolis also ranked well on that metric.
“That is not an accident,” Gerli said.
This is the clearest message from the report. The housing market is no longer being driven only by hype, weather, politics, or lifestyle branding. People are doing math.
They are asking what they can afford, what rent takes from their paycheck, and whether buying a home is still possible.
Miami And Orlando Now Look Different
Gerli said the Bank of America data challenges a popular story many people still tell about Florida.
For years, real estate conversations often framed New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Detroit as places people were leaving, while Florida was the obvious winner. But Gerli said the new data complicates that view.
He said Miami had the fourth-biggest population loss in the first quarter of 2026, behind only Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis. Orlando, he said, had the sixth-biggest loss.
“More people are leaving Miami and Orlando than New York, Chicago, and Detroit,” Gerli said.
He said that statement alone should reframe how people think about the current housing market.
Gerli also pointed to other warm-weather boom markets that have weakened. Atlanta has crossed into negative territory, he said, while Charlotte also showed a small population loss. Tampa, San Diego, and Houston were also on the loss side in the data he discussed.
Dallas and Nashville were barely positive, according to Gerli, while Jacksonville and Las Vegas were low on the growth list.
That does not mean every neighborhood in those metros is weak. But it does suggest the national story has changed.
A few years ago, many buyers chased the Sun Belt because it seemed like everyone else was going there. Now, affordability appears to be pulling some of that demand elsewhere.
Property Taxes Could Become A New Battleground
Gerli said one thing that could help Florida is property tax relief.
He discussed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a proposal that could expand the homestead exemption for primary residences. Gerli said the plan being sent to voters would create a new exemption covering $250,000 of a primary home’s assessed value by 2028.
For lower- and middle-income homeowners with less expensive homes, he said, that could remove a large share of their taxable value and save them meaningful money.
“If this goes through, it would be a massive reduction in property taxes for homesteaded owners in Florida,” Gerli said.
He also noted that other states are exploring property tax changes, including Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Illinois.
Gerli said he supports property tax relief when it is aimed at regular homeowners who live in their homes. But he warned against giving the same breaks to investors or second- and third-home owners.
Instead, he suggested states could offset lost revenue by raising taxes on investors and owners of second or third homes.
He pointed to New York City as one place moving in that direction, saying a new tax targets high-value second homes, condos, and co-ops.
Whether viewers agree with that solution or not, Gerli is touching on a real issue. In high-cost markets, monthly affordability is not only about the mortgage. Taxes, insurance, HOA fees, and maintenance can determine whether a home is actually livable for a household budget.
Price Drops Can Take Time
Gerli said buyers should not assume migration changes will show up in home prices immediately.
He compared today’s Florida slowdown with the mid-2000s housing downturn. In that earlier cycle, he said migration started weakening before home prices fell sharply.
According to Gerli, Florida still had rising prices for a while even after migration began to turn down in 2006 and 2007. The more meaningful price declines came later.
He said a similar lag may be happening now.
“The important thing to understand is that there’s often a lag between shifts in population and migration and their inevitable impact on home prices,” Gerli said.
One reason is seller psychology. Gerli said many sellers in places such as Miami may still believe people are flooding in, so they list too high and wait.
Their homes may sit for six months, nine months, a year, or longer before prices adjust enough to meet the new market.
That slow grind is frustrating for buyers, but it is common in housing. Sellers usually do not accept a weaker market all at once. They learn it through showings that do not happen, offers that come in low, and listings that sit.
Neighborhoods Still Matter
Gerli also cautioned against treating an entire metro as one simple market.
He said even in a city like Miami, some neighborhoods may still see prices rise while others fall. In his example, Reventure forecast Coral Gables rising 4.4% in the next year, while North Miami was forecast to drop 7.8%.
That contrast matters because national migration trends can explain the broad direction, but they do not replace local research.
A buyer in a strong neighborhood may still face competition, even if the metro is weakening overall. A seller in a softer ZIP code may need to adjust quickly if inventory is rising and demand is fading.
This is where the housing market becomes more complicated than a headline. “Florida is down” or “the Midwest is up” may be true at a high level, but real estate decisions happen on specific streets, in specific subdivisions, at specific price points.
Affordability Is Now The Main Story
Gerli’s larger takeaway is that America’s housing map is changing again.
The pandemic boom rewarded places with warm weather, loose restrictions, remote-work appeal, and strong migration buzz. But in 2026, the Bank of America data suggests affordability is becoming the deciding factor.
Indianapolis, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Louisville, and Minneapolis are not winning because they are suddenly the flashiest places in the country. They are winning because more people can make the numbers work there.
That could reshape home prices, rents, inventory, and demand for years.
For buyers, the shift may create opportunities in markets where sellers have not yet accepted weaker demand. For sellers, it is a warning not to rely on old assumptions. And for investors, it is a reminder that following yesterday’s migration story can be expensive.
Gerli’s message is that the housing market is moving away from hype and toward math.
People are no longer just chasing the places everyone talked about during the pandemic. Increasingly, they are choosing the places where they can afford to live.
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