These 10 Affordable ZIP Codes are Hottest with Movers This Year

Wallet-conscious renters are finding deals in warm places.

We found that in some of the most popular spots for recent movers — sunny Florida and Arizona dominate the list — rent prices are often below the national median.

Jasen Edwards, a realtor and real estate consultant in Austin, TX, with 25 years in the business, says apartment-hunters are likely to follow a good deal when considering a move. For some, warm weather may just be an added bonus.

“Renters may decide to move when they find a more cost-effective option that allows them to maintain or improve their quality of living,” he says. “This can result from changes in their financial situation or discovering better rental deals in the market.”

Beginning early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the real estate market experienced significant shifts as many renters and even homeowners fled major metros for suburbs and smaller places. Remote workers led the way with these long-distance moves. According to an Upwork survey conducted last year about 2021, an estimated 5 million had relocated in 2021. More than a quarter of those surveyed said that they moved to a new place more than four hours’ commute from their workplace — and the main reason cited? Savings on living costs.

“The upside to working from anywhere is that renters can move to areas where the rent is more affordable, allowing their pay to go further,” says Stacy Brown, director of training for property firm Real Property Management in Waco, TX.

Considering following these movers’ lead? We crunched recent change-of-address numbers from the U.S. Postal Service to find the ZIP codes where most Americans moved in January and February of this year, and took affordability into account by comparing them with our own data on median rents for one-bedroom apartments in each ZIP code. Out of more than 107,000 data points, we found the 50 most popular ZIP codes where renters can score rent prices right now that are below the national median of $1,430 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Below, we highlight the top 10.

If you’re mobile and looking to move and save, read on. By the end of this article, you may even be calling up a moving company and considering an interstate move.

For more specific guidance on how much rent you can afford, use our rent calculator. Keep in mind: A general rule of thumb is that you should not spend more than 30% of your monthly income on housing and you should also take into account an area’s general cost of living.

Half of the top 10 ZIP codes in our data lie in the Sunshine State. The post office says more than 700 people relocated in January and February to one of them (the numbers come from people filling out official change-of-address forms, so they represent some, but not all, movers).

Arizona was home to two of the top 10 ZIP codes in our data.

Leaving the big city can pay off rent price–wise, according to our data.

We crunched recent change-of-address numbers from the U.S. Postal Service to find the ZIP codes where most Americans moved in January and February of this year, and took affordability into account by comparing them with our own data on median rents for one-bedroom apartments in each ZIP code. Below is our full list.

We combined data from the United States Postal Service on change-of-address filings by ZIP code with our data on median rents for one-bedroom apartments. We limited our analysis to address changes in January and February 2023, the latest months for which data were available. Median rental prices were calculated for each U.S. ZIP code that met adequate inventory thresholds for those months, and paired with the USPS data. In this list, we only included cities where the median monthly rent price for a one-bedroom apartment fell below the national median of $1,430 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. The rankings are based off of the number of movers to each ZIP code, from the most to least amount of net movers.