TAMPA, Fla. — There is no denying Florida's population is booming — with hundreds of thousands moving into the Sunshine State. But a growing number of people are also calling it quits.
Florida is still one of the top states people are moving to. More than 91,000 are New Yorkers, according to recent data published in October by the United States Census Bureau based on the 2022 American Community Survey.
The survey shows that an estimated 738,969 moved here while 489,905 left.
"We just moved from Clearwater, Florida, to the North Carolina mountains, and I have no regrets," Irene Ferris told ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska via Zoom. "We lived there since 1986, owned our house since 1992."
Ferris is not retired but posted her reasons for leaving on the website Quora, answering the question, "Why are retirees leaving Florida?" Her post went viral, receiving thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and garnering 1.8 million views. When we interviewed her, it was only at 1.7 million.
She read her post out loud to Paluska:
We just moved from Clearwater, FL, to the NC mountains, and I have no regrets. We lived there since 1986, owned our house since 1992. The insurance on a 1400 SF concrete block house built in 1951 was going up over $6k. Our auto insurance was $400 a month for two older drivers and two older cars with clean records. Our electric bill in the summer was over $400 a month to keep the house cool in the heat.
The heat is getting worse—don't believe anyone who tells you that it's always been like this. It was rare that Pinellas County cracked 90F because of the sea breezes. They crack that all the time now. Storms were a hazard, but only every few years. Now, they're bigger, stronger, and more frequent.
Sure, I now have an income tax, but I'm paying so much less for insurance (on a house almost 2x the size), electricity, gas, and other incidentals that I'm actually coming out way ahead.
I also don't have to deal with DeSantis and his groupies. And while this area does trend more red, I have only seen one Orange Guy flag in the past two and a half months, unlike my old neighborhood with the "F*ck Biden" flags flying.
No. Regrets.
"What's the worst comment you've gotten?" Paluska asked.
"Oh, it's one who called me a 'See you next Tuesday,' 'W-H-O' that was not very nice," Ferris said.
"Is there this weird Florida thing going on? For people that come here and for people that leave?" Paluska asked.
"It's really weird because even up here, like I said, this area's is very conservative up in the North Carolina mountains. And even up here, people are like, Florida, you know, they're getting a little weird down there. They're going a little too far. You know, they're, they're picking a fight with Mickey Mouse," Ferris said with a laugh.
Ferris told Paluska her decision to leave was based on the cost of living, hurricanes, excessive summer heat, insurance, and other personal factors. Politics, for her, played a more minor role in the bigger picture.
"Right now, what we're seeing is a big influx of people from the Northern states," Realtor Laura Bohannon-Myers with EXP Realty Tampa told Paluska. "It's a beautiful upgrade in lifestyle when people come here because we, as much as our prices have gone up, they're still more competitive than I think anywhere else that you can go."
Bohannon-Myers said people coming in from out of state are pricing some locals out of the market.
"I've seen more cash buyers this last year than I've seen in my entire, I don't know, very many decades of a career," Bohannon-Myers said. "And, so people are coming here with pockets full of cash."
Bohannon-Myers said she's selling more homes to new residents moving out of state. The top reasons her clients come here are for work or family. But, some are motivated by politics.
"People talk about politics a lot, surprisingly, a lot. You get them in the car, and they spill everything. And it's a lot of fun because I enjoy that banter back and forth," Bohannon-Myers said. "I've had people come in and say, I'm moving here because of your governor. I've had people moving out, saying I'm moving out because of your governor. I had a family that sold their day to the home and went to live in the basement of their New York family's home with their child. And, they did it because they wanted to be closer with family."
Ferris said that was the driving force for her, too.
"I think it's a combination of everything," Ferris said. "It's the economics, it's the politics, it's the environment. But at the end of the day, I have to do what's best for the family."