Lee’s Summit, Mo. – A year ago, Melanie Fischer, a lifelong Californian, was not entirely sure where Missouri was. So when her husband proposed that they consider moving there, she raced to locate the state on a map printed on her children’s placemats.
Today, Fischer and her family live in this suburb of Kansas City, in a five-bedroom house that is nearly twice the size of their former home near San Bernardino, with a huge yard and a lake view from the hot tub on their deck. Still, Fischer, 28, and her husband, Nathan, 30, had enough money left after their move to pay off the debt on their two cars and buy a 21-foot boat.
Many of their new neighbors cannot fathom why the Fischers left sunny California for, of all places, Missouri.
“You have to give up things,” Melanie Fischer said, “to get things.”
A growing number of people are giving up on California after a decade of soaring home prices, according to separate data from the Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service and the state’s finance department.
Last year, a half million Americans left California for other parts of the United States, while fewer than 400,000 moved there.
The net outflow has risen fivefold, to more than 100,000, since 2001, an analysis by Economy.com, a research company, shows, although immigration from other countries has kept the state’s population growing.
The factors that have made California, with its sun drenched coasts and dynamic economy, so alluring have also made it unaffordable for many people.