Amidst changes in career paths, climate, and culture, northeastern Americans flock to southern states like the Carolinas, leaving some locals dissatisfied.
The number of people making the move from the Northeast to the South has risen 57% since 2000. The top five most popular states to move to in 2023 were South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona, and Florida.
I am part of this statistic. Every year for about five years, my parents went on a spring break trip to South Carolina in the hopes of finding their new “happy place.” My entire family hasn’t lived anywhere but New Jersey for generations. But my parents are desperate to make the change, and this year, it’s finally happening. The house is sold, and they bought a townhouse by Lake Keowee.
One reason for our move is we simply can’t afford New Jersey taxes and housing costs anymore. Another is the overcrowding of a once quiet rural county. The expansive farmland and fields are gone, and in their place are Amazon warehouses and apartment buildings. I just can’t help but wonder; if so many people are coming to the South to escape these things, aren’t we just going to create the same issues there?
I wanted to get to the bottom of this trend and how it’s affecting the locals already.
Why so many are making the move
Fran Graham, a real estate agent based in Seneca, South Carolina, said she herself made the move from New Jersey to the South and many of her clients are doing the same. She said she noticed a sharp uptick in the trend during COVID lockdown.
“I think what really prompted it was that the rules were so much stricter up in the New York, New Jersey area, so people were going stir crazy and they needed to get out. What they realized at that point was that nobody was going into the office anymore so they could work from anywhere, so they were coming south just to get away from that because it was so lax down here,” she said.
The biggest reason she hears from her clients for making the big move is money. Taxes and property values in the Northeast are high, and still rising. She said many people simply couldn’t afford it anymore.
“Your money goes a lot farther down here. You can get a lot more house for your money, and the property taxes are so much less,” Graham said. Graham said she notices the main demographic making the move is baby boomers, around retirement age. She said Florida used to be the most popular retirement state, but the Carolinas are gaining popularity because of the overcrowding and high temperatures in Florida.
“The baby boomers right now are starting to retire, and they want somewhere without the harsh winters, and maybe Florida is too hot for them. They like having all four seasons, but they don’t want to deal with the snow shovels and whatnot,” Graham said.
Kathy Kinnamon, a retiree from Flemington, New Jersey, made the move with her husband Mike in 2020, and they now live in Mars Hill, North Carolina. She echoes Graham’s statement about the climate of the Carolinas being a major draw for her, but not because she’s a fan of the warm weather. She said she likes it because she pays less taxes for it.
“Up North, they need a huge amount of infrastructure for the winters. We needed salt and plows, and we were paying for that. Here, you don’t need to have that for difficult winters,” she said.
Kinnamon said they were looking for somewhere where they could have some more freedom and privacy than their old town. Flemington is in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, which Kinnamon said was once a peaceful town perfect for shopping, entertainment, and raising a family. Now, with the expansion in developments and population, it is unrecognizable to what it once was. She said she was driven out due to the crowded, traffic-filled streets and steep housing costs.
“It was very crowded and very expensive. Real estate taxes for our 3 acres were 4 times as much as I’m paying down here for 28. So once you retire and you have fixed income, when everyone’s costs are going up, you need quality of life. We wanted to reset the clock as far as population, regulation, traffic, and roll it all back 20 years,” Kinnamon said.
Kinnamon and Graham both said politics are a major concern for many northerners moving south. Hunterdon County is one of the only red counties in the primarily blue New Jersey and Northeast region as a whole. Kinnamon said she feels more of a sense of freedom in North Carolina with there being less regulations and rules day-to-day.
As politics become more polarizing, Graham said they see many conservative people are drawn to the South to be in a place that better supports their views. She said she noticed this not only from northerners, but Californians. According to the U.S. Census, California had a net loss of 341,866 residents, with most people moving to Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
“We have an influx of Californians too who are just fed up with the politics and want to come to a red state. I know a lot of people in New York and New Jersey too who say the extreme liberal views were driving them out so they came here where it’s more conservative,” Graham said.
Concerns for the locals
Regarding politics, Graham said she is worried some northerners may come to the South not realizing how different the culture is, thus trying to change it. She said people should not expect the South to become what others want it to be, as change does not go over very easily here.
“Southerners are kind of set in their ways. We have to realize that we moved to their land. We can’t expect all this change. I knew a woman who moved here knowing that her son needs medical marijuana. South Carolina is probably going to be the last state to ever legalize marijuana. She was down in Columbia boycotting and I was like, then why did you move here? Get over it and get used to it because that’s what it is,” she said.
Kinnamon’s concern is with how popular it is becoming to move to the Carolinas, it won’t be long before it becomes the same overcrowded, overpriced, overregulated place she was trying to escape by moving out of New Jersey. She said in just a few years, her county is already changing drastically.
“It shocks me at how the population is growing everywhere. It’s creeping up here into Madison County. We have two huge new developments going in, and I have empathy for the locals. I’d love to move to a community where they have development restrictions. I rationalized it in my mind because I bought an existing house. I didn’t buy new construction,” Kinnamon said.
Graham said from a real estate perspective, she understands why locals are feeling frustrated about these changes. With every new, luxurious development comes the destruction of an older, likely lower income one, pushing locals out of their own hometowns due to lack of space and affordability. She said the minimum wage workers in cities like Greenville cannot afford to live there anymore, and they lose their jobs in places like hotels and restaurants due to lack of transportation and proximity.
“People in town get a little resentful. The people that lived here in Seneca were not very well off. It’s not a rich city, it’s blue collar, it’s a lot of poverty, and then these northerners come down with all their money and they want to change everything. All these poor little neighborhoods are being bulldozed now, and they’re putting up million-dollar houses on these lots, and people are buying them,” Graham said.
How locals are feeling
Ryah Harper, a UNC Asheville student from Columbia, South Carolina, said she noticed large numbers of northerners moving to her city her whole life, but it has increased in the past few years. She said she recognizes that the Carolinas are a beautiful place to live, as it has culture and beautiful scenes of nature, but gentrification and overpopulation in her hometown upsets her.
“What I dislike is that they come in swarms, so there’s a whole bunch coming at the same time and they take away a lot of people’s houses,” she said.
Harper said she has even noticed cultural changes, such as people in her city starting to have accents more adjacent to New York or New Jersey rather than southern accents. She also said she is a fan of their clothing and appreciates the influence they have on fashion in the South.
“I just wish northerners knew southern hospitality, because here, being so upfront about things is not the right thing to do. It’s actually very disrespectful. Northerners move here and they start being rude and brash towards other people for absolutely no reason, and we’re all kind of confused,” she said.
My move
It’s ironic to me that the things that are driving my family and so many others out of the Northeast are the same issues they are now causing for southern locals. If it was up to me, I would make my family live in New Jersey forever. It’s where all of my loved ones are, and it’s all I’ve ever known. I can’t control where my family ends up, but I can make sure I know my place, because I know how it feels to see your hometown become unrecognizable.