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Home prices are the big driver, and it is causing tens of thousands of Californians to seek out new places to live here in the Lone Star State.
When Bill Fulton was recently asked by business leaders if Golden State residents were really coming to Texas in large numbers, he went to work to find the answer.
As the director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, Fulton analyzed the numbers, and here's what he found.
On average, about 35,000 to 40,000 Texans move to California every year, but recently a noticeable number of people are doing just the opposite.
In 2018 and 2019, about 80,000 people a year made the move from California to Texas.
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The Kinder Institute found as housing prices go up in California, there is a steady migration to Texas.
It has a real-world impact on housing prices in the Lone Star State and those who were born and raised here when they try to find an affordable place to live.
"The consequences it does have is the people who already live in Texas who maybe do not have a lot of home equity and are not used to those California home prices, they may have a more difficult time buying a house, at least the house they want to buy in the place they want to buy," said Fulton.
That means lower income families may have to move further away from the city center to find affordable housing, making their commutes longer and more expensive.
As for counting on California to turn Texas blue, there doesn't seem to be enough migration to make that happen on its own.
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