Families with children under 18 made up just 24% of homebuyers in 2025, down from 58% in 1985, per NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. That is the lowest share on record. Affordability has replaced career as the main reason people relocate at all. In fact, 58% of long-distance movers cite cost as their top motivator. That is up against just 28% who moved for a job, per PODS’ 2026 Moving Trends Report.
Photo by Shirley Fisher on Unsplash
Housing costs and tight inventory are keeping many households in place longer, according to Atlas Van Lines President Ryan McConnell. That slowdown makes the families who do move stand out. They keep landing in the same handful of markets.
One coastal corridor keeps winning the move-in race
PODS groups Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, together in its migration rankings. That combined metro ranked as the top destination for inbound movers for the fourth consecutive year in 2026, per PODS’ 2026 Moving Trends Report.
But a strong ranking on a migration list says nothing about how a house actually functions day to day. A layout that forces three children through a single narrow hallway, or lacks entry space near the front door, creates daily friction no listing photo captures.
You can browse through listings with virtual tours or videos via Houzeo to see what the layout actually looks like in real life. Virtual tours and high-quality videos often paint a better picture.
The move itself can cost more than the down payment
Mortgage rates are holding at 6.49% as of late June 2026, according to Freddie Mac. That already stretches most family budgets before the moving truck shows up. The hidden risk for large families sits in the gap between locking in that mortgage and finishing the move.
A cross-country move alone can run $7,000 to $15,000 depending on distance and household size, according to Atlas Van Lines’ 2026 pricing data. That figure covers the truck and labor only. It doesn’t touch what comes after: new school uniforms, extracurricular setups, and furnishing a larger layout for a family that already stretched its budget to afford the move.
Parents who budget too tightly for these post-closing expenses often end up rushing final decisions or skipping essential home preparations. The result is long-term regret, simply because the cash ran out before the first box was unpacked.
Building in a cushion above the baseline purchase and moving estimates is one of the more reliable ways to avoid that outcome.
Five cities are absorbing most of the competition
Sacramento, Phoenix, Sarasota, Cape Coral, and Nashville were the five most-searched relocation destinations between December 2025 and February 2026, per Redfin’s migration data.
Families searching these markets are competing with every other type of buyer, not just other parents. School districts and neighborhoods that look right on paper attract offers that move faster than most out-of-state buyers can respond to.
Families who navigate this well pick the school district before the neighborhood. A district rating reflects historical performance, not what happened to enrollment and staffing after consecutive years of heavy in-migration.
Parents who have had children in a district for two or three years know things no rating site captures, and those conversations during a visit carry more weight than any scheduled tour.
Buyers finally have more room to wait
First-time buyers made up 35% of the market in May 2026, the highest share since June 2020, per NAR’s Realtors Confidence Index. Inventory gains and fewer inspection waivers shifted conditions in buyers’ favor across the board.
According to Houzeo’s housing market data, the median home price in the US tracks at $438,964, with properties spending an average of 51 days on the market. That window gives families some breathing room to evaluate a neighborhood rather than rushing a blind bid.
A neighborhood that looks calm on a Saturday afternoon can back up badly at school pickup on a weekday. Walking the streets rather than driving through them shows whether children are actually outside on a Tuesday afternoon, a detail that says more about daily life than any listing description will.
Renting first buys time to choose right
Sellers have outnumbered buyers by record margins for months, according to Redfin. That imbalance gives relocating families more negotiating room than they have had in years and more room to be patient before committing to a purchase. Renting in the target area for a few months before buying is one of the more reliable ways to avoid a decision that takes years to undo.
It shows which school feeder actually fits, which part of the neighborhood works on a school morning, and what homes at your price point genuinely look like from the inside rather than from a listing photo.
A rental period doesn’t guarantee a better outcome on its own. It simply gives a family more information before making one of the biggest financial decisions of the year.
The families who look back on a relocation feeling like they landed somewhere right are almost always the ones who gave the search enough time to find something they actually chose, rather than something that was simply available when the deadline arrived.