A U-Haul truck is seen stopped at a traffic light in Boston's Copley Square. iStock photo
Massachusetts residents move homes at very low rates thanks to the state’s high housing prices, according to a new analysis.
The report from Point2Homes, a portal for single-family and small multifamily rentals affiliated with RentCafe, said 693,711 people moved in Massachusetts in 2024, representing 9.8 percent of the population and the eighth-lowest rate in the nation. Among interstate homeowners, the state was in the middle of the pack: 22 percent of Massachusetts movers last year were doing so across state lines.
While the state saw a lack of moves, Greater Boston continued to be a destination for new residents. The metro areal had the third-highest percentage of movers from other states in the country, a reflection of its large student population: 87.2 percent of the people who moved in from out-of-state were renters.
Out of 110,165 total movers to Boston, 31,282 came from outside of Massachusetts.
“The sharp decline in geographical mobility is the single most important social change of the past half century,” Yoni Appelbaum, a prominent journalist at The Atlantic and author of a new book on declining residential mobility, said in a statement released by Point2Homes along with its report. “In that same span, fewer Americans have started new businesses, and fewer Americans have switched jobs — from 1985 to 2014, the share of people who became entrepreneurs fell by half. More Americans are ending up worse off than their parents — in 1970, about eight out of every 10 young adults could expect to earn more than their parents.”
A variety of factors have affected Bay Staters’ ability to move. Rising costs, relatively high interest rates and economic concerns have kept people from moving properties, observers say.
According to the latest U.S. Census residential mobility data analyzed by Point2Homes, 11 percent of Americans (37,045,761 residents) changed their address in the past year. Of those who did move, only 19.3 percent changed states in 2024, compared to 20.1 percent the prior year.
