New Census Bureau population estimates released in May show Americans continue to leave large coastal cities for mid-tier Sun Belt suburbs. Brokers and real estate agents across the country say the data matches what they’ve been seeing over the past few years.
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Mid-tier suburbs in markets like Raleigh, North Carolina, and Dallas are seeing faster growth than their central cities. Meanwhile, the Northeast — New York City and the urban cores across the region — show flat-to-declining populations amid persistently tight inventory.
The suburbs have long dominated American homebuying, and that hasn’t changed. According to the National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 44 percent of buyers purchased in a suburb or subdivision between July 2024 and June 2025, with another 24 percent choosing small towns. Just 14 percent bought in an urban or central city, down from 16 percent the year prior, which had been the highest urban share since 2014.
The pandemic reshaped where Americans bought homes — temporarily. In 2022, the suburban share of purchases dipped below 40 percent, as buyers leapfrogged the suburbs entirely for small towns and rural areas, chasing space and the freedom that full-time remote work suddenly afforded them. But 2022 turned out to be an anomaly. The share of suburban home purchases jumped back up the next year, though it now remains below the 2017 peak of 51 percent.
According to real estate agents Inman spoke to, the common thread running through every move and purchase in 2026 — whether suburban, exurban, small-town or rural — is monthly payment math, not always lifestyle preference.
The financing favors the ‘burbs
Cody Schuiteboer, president and CEO of Best Interest Financial, a Michigan-based mortgage brokerage, put it plainly. A buyer who can afford a $380,000 to $420,000 home in Celina, Texas, or Anna, Texas — suburbs north of Dallas — may only afford a $280,000 to $300,000 home in central Dallas on the same income, because of how debt-to-income limits interact with home prices.
“It’s about housing prices and the debt-to-income ratio limit set by banks, not salaries,” Schuiteboer said. “When it comes to a larger area, newer construction and the same monthly mortgage payment, people may accept longer commuting times.”
Remote work makes that trade more favorable. A buyer who’s on-site two days a week in a downtown office instead of five can absorb a longer commute at a fraction of the cost. And that buyer can finance a home in a lower-cost market using a salary tied to a higher-cost city.
Schuiteboer said that dynamic is one of the clearest structural forces driving the Census pattern, and he expects it to continue for at least the next 24 months absent a significant correction in Sun Belt home prices.
Buying on the suburban fringe
Ryan Fitzgerald, owner of Raleigh Realty in North Carolina, said the Raleigh metro is living that story in real time. Suburbs that would have been considered too far out five years ago — Fuquay-Varina, Clayton, Garner, Wendell — are now drawing serious buyer interest, largely from remote and hybrid workers relocating from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic.
“They have figured out that they can sell a two-bedroom condo in Northern Virginia or New Jersey for what they can purchase a four-bedroom home in one of the suburban communities surrounding Raleigh,” Fitzgerald said, “and have a significant amount of money left over after purchase to deposit into a bank account.”
The buyer profile has shifted, too. Fitzgerald said the panic offers and waived contingencies of 2021 are gone, but desirable suburbs still see well-priced properties go under contract quickly. Lack of inventory relative to demand is keeping prices stable despite higher rates. Builders in the Raleigh area are moving fast, he said, but not fast enough.
Reinaldo Gonzalez, founder and broker at InvesTeam Realty in South Florida — a team of more than 120 agents completing over 400 transactions annually in Miami-Dade and Broward counties — said the same dynamic is playing out in his market.
Gonzalez noted that Doral offers a meaningful price advantage over Coral Gables, where single-family home medians ran between $1.9 million and $2.3 million in 2025, with Doral’s median closer to $590,000, a gap that can exceed 60 percent depending on the specific properties compared.
Against broader Miami, the discount is narrower. Doral, which is 13 miles west of downtown Miami, also offers newer construction, highly rated charter schools, and an established logistics hub anchored by its proximity to Miami International Airport.
“The buyers relocating aren’t leaving the region,” Gonzalez said. “They’re moving sideways to find better value.”
The population is down in NYC, but demand isn’t
New York City is a notable counterargument to the narrative of simple population-driven demand slowdown.
Jacob Wood, a broker at Coldwell Banker Warburg, pointed out that NYC’s population is recovering from its pandemic lows — now sitting around 8.58 million, still below 2020 levels — but housing demand is stronger than ever.
The households-to-units mismatch matters more than raw headcount. COVID-era changes in living arrangements and work-from-home space requirements increased the number of households even as the population dipped.
“We need to build more,” Wood said. “Even though the population has shrunk slightly, the number of households has increased, and we’re not building nearly enough to keep up.”
Maria Kourepenos, also at Coldwell Banker Warburg, added that NYC’s market is buffered by demand forces that don’t show up cleanly in domestic population data, such as foreign students, international workers and part-time residents who want a foothold in the city. Well-priced apartments are still moving quickly, she said.
Jonathan Ayala, a licensed Compass agent who focuses on the New Jersey condo market bordering New York City, said buyers who previously would have targeted Manhattan are increasingly landing in Hoboken and Jersey City.
A financing choice, not a lifestyle one
For real estate agents operating in growth suburbs, the bigger structural question is whether local government and builders can keep up. Fitzgerald said Raleigh, North Carolina-area suburbs that have implemented zoning reform, infrastructure investment and streamlined permitting are handling growth better than communities where that coordination has broken down.
He also noted that builders in high-growth markets have shifted their product mix. There are fewer cookie-cutter subdivisions, more communities with amenity cores, greenways, and mixed-use elements designed to offer suburban value with urban qualities.
Schuiteboer offered a read from the financing side: The affordability math still heavily favors mid-tier Sun Belt and suburban markets over the Northeast.
The Sun Belt’s reputation for affordable housing has grown complicated, though, as the region is now sharply fragmented. Coastal Florida metros like Miami and major hubs in Texas like Austin match or exceed the national average, driven up by years of out-of-state demand. Yet many midsize Southern cities still offer homes well below that benchmark.
The U.S. housing market has split along supply lines, according to the March S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Index.
Sun Belt and Western cities like Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa, and Seattle are posting year-over-year price declines, while inventory-constrained Northeast and Midwest markets like Chicago (+6.09 percent) and New York (+4.02 percent) are leading national growth. Nationally, home prices are up just 0.67 percent year-over-year — essentially flat in real terms — reflecting a market defined more by regional divergence than broad momentum.
The Sun Belt still offers relative value in many markets. It just no longer offers it everywhere. The trick for homebuyers, then, is finding the best deals in this fragmented market, which are usually farther away from city cores.
“When a buyer moves to Celina, Texas, or the outskirts of Charlotte, it won’t be primarily about lifestyle,” Schuiteboer said. “It’s financing.”
