The Default Became a Comparison. That Is a Better Buyer.

moveBuddha's mid-year 2026 read, published in July, put South Carolina first at 2.02 searches in for every one out, Idaho second at 1.65, and Florida third at 1.52. Read that last number carefully. Florida at 1.52 is still a state with far more people pricing a move in than pricing a move out. It has not started losing people. It has stopped being the automatic answer.

That distinction matters because of what the data is. These are moving-cost searches, not closings. Nobody counted here has signed anything. What makes the ranking worth reading anyway is sequence. A search is the first cheap step in a move, and it lands well before the closing does. Intent is the leading edge, not the event. So the number is early information about where the next year or two of demand is pointing, not a tally of who already arrived.

Here is the shift worth naming. For two decades Florida was less a destination than a default. No income tax, warm water, a short flight from the Northeast. A household that would have defaulted there five years ago and is now pulling a South Carolina quote alongside a Florida one is doing something different. It is running an actual comparison. And a comparison shopper is a far better prospect than a default ever was: better informed, clearer on the trade-offs, more likely to close on the market that genuinely fits rather than the one everyone named at dinner.

For a seller in the Carolinas, that is the quiet story under the ranking. North Carolina sits fifth at 1.49, still inside the top tenth of the country for inbound interest, so this is a regional pull and not a one-state fluke. The buyer showing up increasingly has the alternative priced in their head already. Meet them with the comparison done honestly, including the places the Carolinas lose. The comparison shopper rewards the agent who runs the real math and distrusts the one who only sells the postcard.

If you are weighing a Carolinas move against Florida or anywhere else, we will run the honest side-by-side before you decide, and that conversation is complimentary.