(NEXSTAR) – Despite a still-challenging housing market in 2025, people were still on the move last year, the latest report from U-Haul suggests.
As it does every year, the truck rental and storage company has released its migration report, showing where its customers were taking their rented equipment. The “Growth Index” ranks each state based on how many customers rented one-way trucks, trailers, or moving containers from a U-Haul location and returned them in another state.
More specifically, states are ranked based on their net gain or loss of one-way U-Haul rentals.
It’s also worth noting that it’s not entirely clear whether these one-way rentals were always used in the case of someone relocating. U-Haul admits that tracking one-way rentals from one state to another isn’t an exact representation of “population or economic growth,” but it can serve to show “how well states, metros, and cities are attracting and maintaining residents.”
In 2025, one-way rental data showed that everything may actually be bigger in Texas, as the state saw the largest U-Haul growth, according to the company’s report. The previous year, Texas came in second behind South Carolina, which slipped to No. 5 in the latest report.
The 10 states ranking at the top of U-Haul’s growth index are:
- Texas
- Florida
- North Carolina
- Tennessee
- South Carolina
- Washington
- Arizona
- Idaho
- Alabama
- Georgia
U-Haul suggested the warm weather in most of these states could be appealing to new customers.
Consider the states that rank at the bottom of U-Haul’s index. Only one, California, is largely exempt from the risk of bitter winters:
- California
- Illinois
- New Jersey
- New York
- Massachusetts
- Maryland
- Pennslyvania
- Ohio
- Connecticut
- Michigan
California’s exodus has long been a topic of conversation, and the state ranked at the bottom of the growth index in 2024 as well.
U-Haul noted another trend among the top and bottom states. Seven of the 10 states that saw the largest growth in 2025 have Republican governors, and President Trump won nine of them in the 2024 election. Alternatively, nine of the 10 states at the bottom of the list have Democratic governors, and seven voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election.
“We continue to find that life circumstances — marriage, children, a death in the family, college, jobs and other events — dictate the need for most moves,” said John “J.T.” Taylor, U-Haul International president, in a press release. “But other factors can be important to people who are looking to change their surroundings. In-migration states are often appealing to those customers.”
You can view U-Haul’s full report here.
Those states in the southern portion of the U.S. may become especially attractive to homebuyers in 2026. Reports released from Realtor.com and Redfin before the new year suggested that metros in the South could see cooling housing markets in the coming months.
That includes cities in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina — all states that ranked in the top five on U-Haul’s growth index.
Alternatively, Realtor.com and Redfin have predicted that the markets in metros in the Midwest and Northeast — like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, and Ohio — could heat up.
It may all come down to whether or not the market is affordable for homebuyers.
“The path back toward historic levels of affordability will be gradual, but 2026 takes a solid step in the right direction,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said in December. “For many buyers who have spent years navigating limited options and steep competition, a balanced market with more choices and slightly lower cost burdens can be a game-changer, even if conditions remain far from easy.”