Quoted from PtownPin:Trust me nobody is fleeing California....year after year the population continues to grow. People cash out and move to places that have a much lower cost of living.
We have people leaving for sure.... but we also have plenty coming into the state. I live in Northern California less than an hour north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Our area is having crazy home price inflation from the people in the city coming to live here. We had a bad fire in 2017 and lost 5500 homes and only about half of those have been rebuilt. We haven't seen a mass exodus of people but have had a few people leave. Most of them were close to retirement and sold their expensive homes to move to another lower cost of living state for retirement. It's a plan I hear from a lot of people and have heard for years. You pay off your 1 million dollar plus bay area home and move to Texas, Utah, Tennessee, etc and pay cash for a house and the rest goes into your retirement savings. I've only known a couple people who left outside of this type of move.