Brian Harrington was looking for a bigger house in 2021. He and his wife were expecting a baby and were able to work from home.
They settled in the Riverside County community of Menifee, about 54 miles from their Anaheim home.
Harrington, who works as a PR consultant for Bitcoin startups, searched online for “homes in ‘600s Southern California” and was directed to the rapidly expanding corridor of communities along Interstates 15 and 215.
The couple eventually bought a home in Menifee’s community at Audie Murphy Ranch. “I love the house, love the neighborhood,” Harrington said, noting that the area “feels like Orange County.”
As for the downsides, shopping is limited to “just department stores and big chain restaurants,” he said. “I still haven’t found my hole-in-the-wall pub that I love.”
Major coastal cities in California, most notably San Francisco and Los Angeles, have seen their population decline in recent years. Some residents have left for cheaper housing in other states. But during the same period, some California suburbs like Menifee have experienced significant population booms.
From 2019 to 2022, 1.02 million more people moved out of their homes and businesses in California than into them, a Times analysis of US Postal Service data shows.
The data shows that the five ZIP codes with the most net collections were all suburbs or suburbs around Sacramento and Southern California, including cities like Irvine, Menifee and Walnut.
These fast growing places tend to be suburbs where new housing is being built. Some, like Irvine, are expensive and close to job centers. Others, like Menifee, are farther from urban cores but offer larger homes and more outdoor space for the money. As the practice of remote work increased during the pandemic, distant communities made more sense for some.
While Harrington stayed in California, many others have left the state entirely. The Postal Service’s change of address data supports the theory that California’s shrinking population is largely the result of net migration out of the state, experts say.
No data set is perfect, and Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA, added a note of caution: “In many situations there is a tendency to report moves,” he said, referring to filed change of address requests by post.
The USPS data includes mostly permanent and some temporary moves for individuals, families, and businesses.
Of the more than 1,700 ZIP Codes reviewed, 58% showed more emigrations than entrainments during the four-year span.
USPS processed approximately 36 million changes of address nationwide in 2021. Applications can be submitted online or with a paper form at a post office. Scaled to population, California’s net moveout numbers are in the middle of the states.
One of those Californians planning to leave the state is Kevin Britton, who has a steady job in Southern California and loves to ride his motorcycle to the sun-drenched cities of Malibu and Santa Monica. But he said he was fed up with crime and the high cost of housing in the area.
So the 34-year-old photographer and his wife are packing up their Sylmar townhouse and moving to Las Vegas this spring.
“The pay scale isn’t big enough to justify the cost of living out here,” he said, describing the cost of living in California as “beyond.”
Britton’s move reflects an ongoing demographic trend in the Golden State: Most residents who are moving are leaving large cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
In recent years, a new pattern in California suggests that “the center of cities has become emptier” and “people have moved to the outer ring of the subway,” said Dowell Myers, professor of politics, planning and demography at the USC .
In fact, analysis by The Times shows that of the five ZIP codes with the most net moves, three were in San Francisco and one was in Los Angeles.
The Northern California city of Paradise recorded the second-biggest net moves after the devastating campfire of late 2018.
In the other direction, Menifee and other small towns continue to grow.
Armando Villa, the Menifee city manager, said he is working to transform the area “from a rural community and a lot of undeveloped land into a really prosperous city.”
Menifee became a city in 2008, he said, making it the third-youngest incorporated city in California.
Since then, the population has skyrocketed, rising from 85,000 in 2016 to an estimated 116,000 now, Villa said.
The city grew consciously, he said. “That didn’t surprise us.”
“There’s a lot of new homes being built,” he said, even as rate hikes are slowing home sales.
City data shows that between 2019 and 2022 over 4,500 housing units were built in Menifee, of which virtually all – 97% – were single-family homes.
Many of the new residents are from Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, according to Villa. “The housing shortage is causing people to come here to buy an affordable home,” he said.
Not everyone agrees with the rapid growth. On the Facebook group Menifee 411, where about 22,000 members post about the community, a recent image of a proposed construction project drew the ire of locals.
“Just stop it. You’re taking all the beauty out of this place. It’s called hills and open country,” read the top comment. Another said, “We’re running out of water and the grid can’t handle what we have now. Please stop building.”
While causality is complicated among large groups of people, experts pointed to key factors affecting migration: house prices and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The housing market was a real concern back in 2019,” when data showed more than 200,000 excess moves-in compared to pre-pandemic moves-in, Myers said.
“Tenants can move easily — owners can’t,” he said, noting that churn figures tend to affect renters, who tend to be younger and less affluent than homeowners.
The relocation trend has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
The pandemic “synchronized everyone’s behavior” and caused house prices to “suddenly soar enormously” above pre-existing housing market problems, Myers said.
Irvine is another city trying to build housing to attract potential homeowners from more expensive nearby cities.
Mayor Farrah Khan wasn’t surprised that an Irvine ZIP code shows the second-highest net collections in California. About 10,000 homes have been proposed in the area near the city’s Great Park, she said, and builders have completed “six to seven thousand so far.”
Noting that Irvine’s population nearly doubles during business hours, Khan said, “We’d like to see more people live in Irvine [and] work in Irvine.”
People moving in come from all over, she said, including those “coming from Irvine, from Northern California, from New York,” and immigrants from China and Korea.
According to Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, California has experienced net internal emigration since the 1990s. “Most of the emigrants are low-income people,” he said.
For two decades, “there was enough foreign migration to more than overwhelm domestic emigration” and keep California growing, Green said. Mexico and China provided large numbers of immigrants.
More recently, however, net emigration has increased while immigration has declined as the cost of living has risen and immigration has been restricted by Trump administration policies and the pandemic, contributing to the state’s population decline.
Britton, who grew up in the Miami metro area, said he’s “no stranger to the high cost of living.”
As a photographer, Britton’s main subjects are typically Californian: high-end cars and porn stars.
“I have so many clients out here,” he said of Los Angeles, but “there’s no reason to stay when it’s cheaper to travel here” and live elsewhere.
He also had crime problems in Los Angeles: his truck was wrecked, his trailer robbed, and then set on fire. Drivers showing signs of road frenzy sometimes “follow us home and try to pick something up,” Britton said.
Looking for another location, Britton and his wife researched in Texas, Colorado, Seattle and Las Vegas. Their choice was easy: They spotted a 3,200-square-foot home in Vegas that rents for half what the couple pays for their 1,300-square-foot townhouse in Sylmar.
After the move, Britton said he will miss seeing classic cars on the streets of Los Angeles and the city’s dining scene.
“Everyone wants to live here, but it’s too expensive,” he said.
