It isn’t just billionaires leaving California. Anecdotal data suggest there is also an exodus of regular people who load their belongings into rental trucks and lug them to another state. U-Haul didn’t speculate on the reasons California continues to top the ranking. The U-Haul study across all 50 states found that 7 of the top 10 growth states where people moved to have Republican governors. Texas, Florida and North Carolina were the top three growth states for U-Haul customers, with Dallas, Houston and Austin bagging the top spots for growth in metro regions.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 08, 2026 15:36 UTC