Young Americans are still moving to Texas, but not to the same Texas. Gen Z is landing in San Antonio and Austin. Millennials, a decade older and shopping for square footage, are landing in Houston.
That split is the finding of a migration analysis Redfin published on Sept. 15, built from Census Bureau American Community Survey microdata for 2014, 2019 and 2024. It measures net migration — arrivals minus departures — by generation for each metro area, counting adults who no longer lived in the metro where they lived a year earlier.
San Antonio was the top net destination for Gen Z in 2024, gaining 10,678 more adult Gen Zers than it lost. Washington, D.C., followed at a net 8,631, then Austin (+8,590), Nashville (+8,093) and Dallas (+6,944).
For millennials the ranking reorders entirely. Houston led with a net gain of 16,365, followed by Dallas (+13,072), Baltimore (+11,724), Las Vegas (+8,860) and Atlanta (+8,753). Redfin notes that all five of the top millennial destinations have a median home-sale price under $450,000.
Same exits, different entrances
Where the two generations agree is on what they are leaving. New York posted the largest net outflow for both — 29,554 Gen Zers and 42,698 millennials. Los Angeles was second for both, at 16,465 and 31,107.
After that the lists diverge again. Gen Z’s other big losers were Minneapolis (-17,815), Denver (-13,882) and Detroit (-11,696). Millennials’ were Miami (-21,373), Washington, D.C. (-12,364) and San Francisco (-11,819).
Washington is the sharpest generational contrast in the data: the second-most popular destination for Gen Z and among the metros millennials most commonly left.
“Gen Zers are chasing opportunity, while millennials are chasing space,” said Sheharyar Bokhari, a principal economist at Redfin. “Younger adults are gravitating toward cities where they can launch careers and their social lives, while millennials are more focused on places where a paycheck stretches further and buying a home is attainable.”
Bokhari added that the coastal outflows should not be read as a flight to the cheapest available market: “Most are making relatively short moves, suggesting they want a better job or lower cost of living without giving up their existing networks.”
Short hops, not cross-country treks
The route-level data supports that. The most common single Gen Z move in 2024 was Los Angeles to Riverside, Calif. — 10,261 movers — followed by New York to Philadelphia (9,284) and Los Angeles to San Diego (9,237). All 10 of the most common Gen Z routes were between neighboring metros, including Minneapolis to St. Cloud, Minn., Dallas to Austin, and Baltimore to Washington.
Millennials behaved the same way, with Los Angeles to Riverside again at the top (19,983 movers), then Washington to Baltimore (11,343) and San Jose to San Francisco (11,302). Only one cross-country route, New York to Los Angeles, cracked the millennial top 10.
The price gaps behind those hops are large. Redfin puts the typical New York home at $832,000 against $309,000 in Philadelphia, and the typical Minneapolis home at $404,000 against $323,000 in St. Cloud.
Movement also runs both directions on some of these routes — Gen Zers move from Riverside into Los Angeles and from Baltimore into Washington as well, which Redfin reads as job-driven rather than cost-driven.
What changed in a decade
The comparison with 2014 is the part agents and builders may find most useful. Back then, the youngest adult cohort — millennials, aged 19 to 33 — was heading to Sacramento, Calif., Austin, Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, and Seattle. Only Austin and Dallas appear on both that list and today’s Gen Z top five.
The exit list has proved more durable than the destination list: in 2014 the most common origin metros were New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego and Miami. New York and Los Angeles are still there.
Young adults are also moving less than they used to. About 14% of 19- to 24-year-olds left their metro in 2024, down from roughly 15% in 2014; among 25- to 34-year-olds the share fell to about 9% from about 11%. Redfin attributes part of that to remote work, which lets people change jobs without changing cities, and suggests high housing costs may be deterring some moves outright.
What it means for the receiving markets
For brokerages and multifamily operators, the generational split is a demand-mix signal rather than a headline number. A metro drawing Gen Z is absorbing renters and first-job arrivals; a metro drawing millennials is absorbing three-bedroom buyers and school-district searches. San Antonio and Houston are both Texas, both gaining, and shopping for very different products.
That inflow is arriving into an unusually buyer-friendly market. Sellers now outnumber buyers in every major Texas metro, part of a national pattern in which the seller-buyer gap reached a record 58% in August. Migration is adding households to markets that already have more inventory than takers, a very different setup from the 2021 migration wave, when arrivals met almost no supply.
One caution on reading the numbers: this is 2024 data, the most recent ACS microdata year, not a snapshot of the current market. Redfin excludes metro-year gains above 4% of a generation’s local population to screen out college and military enrollment spikes, and suppresses cells built on fewer than 25 survey records. More housing-market coverage is on RealtyWire’s housing market page.
