New Study Reveals Surprising Trends.

By: Ryan Carrigan
Founder of moveBuddha

Key Findings:

  • In an analysis 42,666 Tweets, we found a 129% increase in mentions of moving to Miami in December 2020 – January 2021 vs the previous year.
  • There were 40% more moves to Miami than out of Miami in 2020.
  • 2.3x more people moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020 than moved in.
  • San Francisco was the 2nd most common source of moves to Miami after New York City, which represented 30% of all Miami-bound moves.

Throughout the pandemic in 2020, there were many conversations about fleeing Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area in general.

We scraped 42,666 Tweets on Twitter going back to Dec 1, 2019 looking for usage of the phrases “move to miami”, “moved to miami”, and “moving to miami”. Below we see a clear increase in the three phrases ramping up in December 2020 and January 2021:

The data from Twitter reveals there was a 129% increase in Tweets mentioning these phrases in the December 20 – January 2021 period over the previous year. Then question arises – do conversations on Twitter translate to real-life moves?

Google Trends Shows the Way

Twitter is where conversations start, but Google Search is where people take action. We pulled the weekly data from Google Trends going back to early 2020 and also found compelling evidence that interest in Miami is growing. Beginning in December 2020, more users were searching for “move to miami” and “moving to miami” than “move to san francisco” or “moving to san francisco”:

This data from Google Trends shows relative popularity between the phrases mentioning the two cities, showing peaks in the final weeks of 2020 and early 2021.

With net moves showing a clear positive throughout the second half of 2020:

Former San Franciscans were among the most common new Miami residents in 2020

San Francisco was the starting point for nearly 11 percent of all the Miami-bound moves we helped with in 2020. This made it the second most common starting point after New York City, which represented 30% of all Miami-bound moves.

Roughly 1 in every 69,5000 San Francisco Bay Area residents moved to Miami with the help of moveBuddha in 2020. This was the highest Miami-bound per capita rate of all metropolitan areas with a population of more than one million.

Only time will tell if this recent tech migration is just a flash in the pan, or if it will fuel sustained growth in the Miami startup scene.

Read the full article HERE.