The Problem with Net Domestic Migration

Twitter's favorite measure of growth is flawed and produces fundamental misunderstandings of population change.

My new favorite way to surprise a real estate investor is to tell them that New York and California are, in fact, gaining population. According to the Census Bureau, New York grew by almost 130,000 people while California gained over 230,000 in 2024.

But you wouldn’t know this by just following along on Twitter, where charts of dramatic outmigration from coastal states dominate.

Tracking the ebbs and flows of population change and migration has become a favorite pastime among urbanists, real estate investors, and the media since the pandemic. Not only have the past five years seen dramatic shifts in how and where we live, but—in a country with a total fertility rate of 1.6 and dropping—population growth is increasingly a zero-sum game. Knowing where people are moving is key to making smart long-term real estate bets.

Unfortunately, the most popular metric illustrating these shifts—Net Domestic Migration—is widely misunderstood and has driven a lot of mediocre takes in the post-pandemic years.

In today’s letter, we’ll break down the components of population change and offer some thoughts on how people who care about such things—including real estate investors—can better understand population growth and predict where things are headed.