From John Burns Real Estate Consulting:

“We used average truck prices to a set of cities to rank the hottest cities for migration in real time. We discovered that pricing between single-city pairs demonstrates these trends even more clearly.

• Movers are fleeing San Francisco for less expensive tech cities. A move from San Francisco to Portland costs over seven times as much as a move in the opposite direction. A move to Seattle costs over five times more than a move back to San Francisco. U-Haul is heavily discounting trucks in the Pacific NW to get them back to San Francisco.
• But San Francisco is attracting movers from other large financial clusters. Rentals to San Francisco from NYC, Chicago, and Boston have significant cost premiums. Otherwise, it costs more to leave San Francisco.
• Movers are also leaving New York City for lower-cost large cities with higher job growth. The largest price disparities between NYC and other cities are for moves to Dallas and Atlanta. On average it costs $2,212 to rent a truck from NYC to Atlanta but only $522 from Atlanta to NYC.

In summary, despite what we hear about the urbanization of America, more Americans are heading for the newer, more affordable housing markets than the expensive, mature urban centers.”