How Wealthy New Yorkers Flocking to Palm Beach in ‘Supercharged Southern Migration’ Have Caused House Prices To Skyrocket

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthy New Yorkers eager to escape the confines of the Big Apple fled south toward the tony, sun-soaked island of Palm Beach, FL—sparking a migration trend that has continued ever since, sending local home prices skyrocketing in the process.

As demand for homes on the barrier island surged, it caused not only a significant surge in the median property price but also prompted a notable drop in available inventory.

“Palm Beach saw a massive uptick in housing demand during the pandemic, which drove home prices higher and inventory levels lower,” says Realtor.com® senior data analyst Hannah Jones.

The median home price in the luxury town, which has a population of fewer than 10,000, peaked at an eye-watering $4.15 million in April 2022 after years of growth, according to Jones.

Although the median asking price has since slipped, it remains well above 2019 levels.

“Despite improvement, home prices remain well above pre-pandemic levels in Palm Beach as the effects of pandemic-era demand persist,” adds Jones.

And the deep-pocketed residents of the Empire State are largely responsible for Palm Beach’s stratospheric home prices, according to experts.

“It’s a wealth migration from New York City,” Ana Bozovic, a Miami-based real estate agent and founder of Analytics Miami, tells Realtor.com, addressing the unprecedented changes in Palm Beach.

A ‘supercharged’ southern migration begins

In 2019, months before the first-known cases of COVID-19 started showing up in U.S. cities, a scant 6.5% of listing views in Palm Beach County came from New York, according to a data analysis by Realtor.com.

However, by 2021, the pandemic had tightened its grip on New York City, overwhelming its hospitals and leaving residents inside the often-limited confines of their homes. So, the high net-worth individuals who were able to do so began casting covetous glances toward Palm Beach, pushing up that share of listing views to 8.1%.

Evidently, New Yorkers liked what the saw down South because the interest in Palm Beach’s real estate continued to grow in the ensuing years, even as the pandemic slowly receded into the past.

“What COVID did was it supercharged migration to South Florida, so it accelerated trends that were already in place,” explains Bozovic.

In 2023, the share of listing views from New York reached an all-time high of 19.6%, meaning that 1 in 5 potential homebuyers were from the Empire State.

“New York State contributed the most out-of-state demand to listings in Palm Beach County each year, from 2019 through 2024,” according to Jones.

A study of driver’s license data carried out by The Palm Beach Post in 2023 showed that New Yorkers led the way for the most newcomers to Palm Beach County who were turning in their non-Florida licenses, with that figure standing at 8,059 in 2022 alone.

Bozovic cited another data set that came out in in 2021, which indicated 41% of the transplants to Palm Beach County that year came from New York City.

And, when the IRS parsed the data that year, it emerged that the Manhattan residents who relocated to Palm Beach County on the heels of COVID-19 all had one thing in common: wealth, with an average annual income of $728,000.

Reshaping the South Florida real estate market

“Entrepreneurship always flows to some new place, and New York was the capital of the 20th century, post-World War II, pre-Internet era,” Bozovic says. “Now, there’s a new era coming, and COVID broke habits long enough to allow the formation of new ones; and it’s sort of supercharged these migration patterns.”

Bozovic points out that what’s been happening in Palm Beach is part of a wider trend that has been reshaping the real estate market of South Florida since the pandemic.

“In Palm Beach County in 2024, the median single-family home price was $665,000. In 2019, it was $370,000. That is an increase of 89%,” Bozovic says, adding that it closely mirrors what she has been seeing in Miami, where the availability of any single-family home below $500,000 has plummeted since 2019.

The scarcity of affordable homes in Palm Beach County and Miami comes down to two closely related factors, according to Bozovic.

“It is not possible to build new product at that price point due to land cost and construction cost, so nothing new at prime locations will be delivered to replace things that have been [there] but have appreciated,” she explains.

The history of the median home listing prices in Palm Beach closely follows the trajectory of New Yorkers’ frenzied interest in the island’s luxe properties and, according to Bozovic, that is no coincidence.

Between September 2019 and January 2025, the median listing price in Palm Beach nearly doubled, increasing from $1.5 million to $2.9 million.

During the same period, the inventory of Palm Beach homes with an asking price of more than $1 million dropped by half, from 313 to 137.

Bozovic says when she looked at the figures, what struck her was the explosion of sales of luxury homes at $2,000 per square foot in Palm Beach County. Those transactions soared by 640% from 2019 to 2024. 

During the same period, sales of ultraluxe properties valued at a minimum of $20 million surged 500%. 

In January 2025 alone, Bozovic says six homes had sold for more than $20 million. For comparison, there were just five sales at that price point for the entire year of 2019.  

While Bozovic concedes that moneyed New Yorkers are not solely to blame for the staggering price increases on Palm Beach real estate, she says they are are unquestionably “an important piece of the puzzle” because, she argues, they “created an appetite for product price points that basically didn’t exist before.” 

Palm Beach turns into a playground for rich and famous

With its balmy year-round climate, pristine beaches, stunning ocean views, and an array of ultraluxury multimillion-dollar properties, it’s not surprising that Palm Beach has become a destination for the rich and famous, led by President Donald Trump.

Trump, 78, was ahead of the curve when, in September 2019, he decided to relocate his family from their primary residence at Trump Tower in Manhattan to his sprawling, 126-room Mar-a-Lago estate and resort, which sits on 17 acres of prime land on the barrier island.

Other 1 percenters soon followed, snapping up eye-popping oceanfront properties in an exclusive area adjacent to Trump’s “Southern White House, which has come to be known, understandably, as “Billionaire’s Row.”

The highly exclusive enclave is home to at least 58 Forbes-listed billionaires, according to recent reporting by The Palm Beach Post, including hedge fund bigwig Ken Griffin; David Koch’s widow, Julia Koch; cosmetics executive Leonard Lauder; and casino owner Steve Wynn, to name a few.

Multiple professional sports team owners also have property on the luxe barrier island, among them the New York Giants’ Woody Johnson, the New England Patriots’ Bob Kraft, and the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles’ Jeff Lurie. 

In January 2024, Fox News host Sean Hannity announced he was also quitting his longtime home in New York in order to pursue his “freedom” in the Sunshine State. At the time, he already owned a vacation home in Palm Beach; however, in the year or so since his departure from New York, he has reportedly purchased two new mansions in Palm Beach County, to the tune of $23.5 million and $14.9 million, respectively.

While median listing prices in Palm Beach may have decreased from the peak in 2022, the luxury segment of the city’s real estate market, possibly bolstered by the “Trump Bump,” is not showing any signs of losing steam.

Megadeals on the rise in Palm Beach

Earlier this week, Realtor.com reported that a 2-acre vacant lot sitting on “Billionaire’s Row” was put on the market for a staggering $200 million.

Listing agent Shelly Newman, of The Corcoran Group, describes the ocean-to-lake parcel at 1980 South Ocean Boulevard as “truly the last of its kind.”

The news of the trophy listing came just days after it emerged that William Lauder, the billionaire heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, was on the verge of selling two parcels of oceanfront land for a stunning $178 million.

If the deal goes through, according to the Wall Street Journal, it would set a new sale record for Palm Beach.

According to Bozovic, the Miami real estate agent, these types of mega-real estate deals will soon become commonplace.

“I think that South Florida has now embraced the $100 million price point,” she says. “It’s become part of the conversation, and I think it’s here to stay.”

Bozovic further predicts that the luxury real estate market of Palm Beach will continue heating up by attracting a growing number of 1 percenters from around the world, eager to snatch one of the coveted pieces of waterfront land.

“It’s not going backwards,” she says of the post-COVID migration pattern. “We’re not going to see a massive net exodus of people back to high-tax states.” 

She adds: “I believe that this wealth migration to South Florida has only just begun.”