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Kimberly Jones was born and raised in Miami, and planned to live her whole life there. It’s where she met her husband, raised her children, and built a four-decade career in logistics.

But in 2025, Jones did something she never expected: She and her husband left Plantation, Florida — nearly 20 minutes west of Fort Lauderdale — for a small rural town about an hour outside Charlotte, North Carolina.

“It was not an easy decision,” Jones, 60, told Business Insider. “Affordability was part of it, but we were also looking forward to having a slower pace of life. I lived in South Florida my entire life — and it’s not anything like what it used to be.”

Jones said Southern Florida’s population growth has made the area increasingly unrecognizable — and, for her, unlivable — pointing to hyper-development in residential construction and the gridlocked traffic she calls “ridiculous.”

“If there’s a corner available, they will build a high-rise on it,” she said. “It’s turning into an overly congested, expensive city. I used to spend two and a half hours a day in the car just going to and from work.”

People are still moving to Florida, but they’re not flocking to it like they used to. Net domestic migration — or the number of people moving into the state from elsewhere in the country minus those moving out to other parts of the US — has been steadily cooling in recent years.

There are a few likely reasons behind the cooler estimates in the Sunshine State. For some, the tax benefits of living in the state don’t outweigh the increase in cost of living. It’s more expensive to buy a home than a few years ago, and property insurance has been higher than in other states.

High housing costs have made Florida less attractive

In recent years, Florida has drawn an influx of newcomers chasing its affordability, driven in large part by its wide range of relatively lower-cost housing and lack of state income tax. Others are lured by its business-friendly tax environment and strong job market.

But the surge of newcomers has created a host of challenges for native and longtime residents who have watched home prices and rents climb, especially in popular cities like Miami and Orlando. It’s prompted some to move to less expensive cities and suburbs elsewhere in the state, or to leave Florida entirely.

“Affordability often drives a lot of domestic moves,” Jed Kolko, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Business Insider. “People tend to move toward less expensive places. In recent years, Florida’s gotten a lot more expensive, so Florida doesn’t look as affordable compared to other places as it did even just a few years ago.”

In December 2020, Florida’s median home-sale price was $298,100; by December 2025, the most recent month with available data, it had climbed to $412,100, Redfin data showed. In addition to higher home prices and rents squeezing residents, home and flood insurance costs have increased, as more frequent and severe natural disasters push homeowners’ premiums higher.

Take Debra Pamplin, who moved from Florida back to the Midwest after 11 years. In 2013, Pamplin moved from her hometown of Missouri to Jacksonville, Florida. During her time there, though, she soured on the area’s traffic, high insurance costs, uncomfortable heat and humidity, and mosquitoes. Pamplin has valued living in the Midwest much more.

“I’d often have to cut spending in other parts of my life just to cover my high monthly insurance costs,” she said in a 2024 Business Insider story. “Now that I’m out of Florida, my monthly insurance expenses are lower, giving me breathing room to spend my money on more fun stuff.”

Florida hasn’t completely lost its appeal

Mariya Letdin, an associate professor of real estate at Florida State University, told Business Insider that even as net migration slows, Florida is “still a popular destination,” but she expects its population will continue to grow slowly.

Aside from slower growth, the profile of who’s moving to Florida is shifting, too.

Michael Martirena, a real estate agent with Compass in South Florida, told Business Insider he’s seen a change in the clients he works with, which he attributes in part to higher housing costs.

“Let’s go back three years ago, pre-pandemic, everyone was coming down here. It didn’t matter what socioeconomic class people were from; they just wanted to come to Florida.” Now, he said, he’s working with more buyers from abroad, as well as wealthy American buyers.

Hamilton Lombard, a demographic researcher based in Virginia, said immigrants moving elsewhere within the US could also be a factor as to why Florida’s domestic migration has weakened. Census data showed that non-citizens who moved between states in the past year from Florida increased from about 30,000 in 2022 to 53,500 in 2024, the latest year available.

Florida’s net international migration has also been cooling, but remains positive, meaning more people are immigrating to Florida from other countries than leaving for destinations outside the US.

“International and affluent buyers still continue to come down to Florida, whether it’s for tax purposes or geopolitical reasons or what’s going on in their states,” Martirena said, adding that a lot of his clientele comes from countries like Dubai, Madrid, and London.