Will people leave Florida after devastating hurricanes? History suggests no

On the other hand, there are signs that Florida’s white-hot real estate market has cooled. Sales of single-family homes fell 12% in September compared with the same period the previous year. But interest rates, rising home prices and skyrocketing insurance costs likely played a bigger role than recent hurricanes.

“Florida is recovering much faster than you think,” said Brad O’Connor, chief economist at Florida Realtors.

What happens after a storm?

Studies of hurricanes along the Gulf Coast have shown that any outward migration tends to be short-lived, and when people do leave, it is usually a short distance move, such as from a barrier island to the mainland. Older people with greater financial resources are more likely to return to devastated communities.

When it comes to the housing market, an initial supply shock can occur as homeowners wait for reimbursement from insurance companies to repair their homes or sell them.

But in the three years after a hurricane, home prices in hurricane-damaged areas of Florida are on average 5% higher than in other parts of the state due to less supply, according to a study of the impact of hurricanes on the Florida housing market conducted by the company from 2000 to 2016 New homeowners tend to be wealthier than previous ones because wealthier buyers can absorb price increases.

Other factors that determine how quickly communities recover include whether homes are insured, the speed of insurance claims and whether there are enough builders. Because of stricter building codes introduced in the years after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992, new homes are holding up to hurricanes better than older ones, O’Connor said.

“If a property is damaged and uninsured and the homeowner says, ‘I don’t want to deal with it,’ there will always be people willing to buy that property because it’s valuable land,” he said. “People are building new homes to new codes and regulations, and the impact of hurricanes is decreasing.”

Short term and long term

Recent hurricanes provide examples of what happens to communities in both the short and long term.

Two years ago, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Lee County, home to Fort Myers, in what used to be one of the fastest-growing areas in the United States. Afterwards, population growth slowed to 1.5% from 4.4% before the hurricane. The number of households fell from about 340,000 to about 326,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2019, three-quarters of United Van Lines’ total freight traffic was in Lee County and a quarter was outbound, but in 2023-24 that figure dropped to two-thirds inbound and a third outbound, the company told The Associated Press.