Migration Myth: NIMBYism and Why Coastal Movers Aren’t Affecting Sunbelt Housing Supply

Our results tackle the narrative in both directions. Some high-exposure counties accelerated their permitting. Others with average exposure slowed sharply. The limits to supply look local, administrative, and policy-specific, not imported by voters. For investors, the correct response is to downgrade broad demographic explanations and upgrade local institutional diligence. The markets that continue to translate demand into supply are doing so because they have the political will, codes, staffing, and infrastructure to permit and deliver. The markets that are slowing are likely doing so for homegrown reasons.

THE CLOSING OF THE SUNBELT FRONTIER?

Academic work has documented a structural decline in America’s housing supply responsiveness over decades. The most recent installment argues that the suburbs that used to add most of the nation’s new housing are no longer doing so at the same pace, including in once-elastic Sunbelt metros such as Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, and Phoenix. Prices are higher, output is lower, and the empirical supply curve looks flatter. The authors point to stricter land use and rising frictions as the natural explanation.[1]

In the market conversation, a different explanation has taken hold. The claim is straightforward and intuitive. People have been moving from supply-constrained coastal states to the Sunbelt. Those newcomers bring anti-growth preferences and, over time, vote for slower growth rules. If that is right, the share of migrants from restrictive places should be associated with a deceleration in local permitting.

This article tests that hypothesis with county-level data. The goal is not to debate in the abstract, but to match exposure to outcome: who moved in, from where, and what happened to the local permitting trend when the macro regime changed. If the “exported NIMBY” story is a primary driver, it should show up in a simple cycle-to-cycle comparison. If it does not, investors should treat the story as background noise and focus on the actual constraints that govern entitlements and administrative throughput.

METHODOLOGY: A TALE OF TWO CYCLES

The framework isolates exposure and outcome across two distinct macro environments.

Exposure. The in-migration rate from historically restrictive, high-barrier states into each Sunbelt county, measured as 2020–24 gross inflow divided by that county’s 2020 housing unit stock. The restrictive-origin list is fifteen states used consistently in the workbook: CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, and VT. This definition avoids cherry-picking and aligns with widely recognized high-regulation (approximately NIMBY) markets.

Outcome. The change in average annual residential permits between the 2012–19 expansion and the 2020–24 period. Using cycle averages reduces year-to-year noise and captures a shift in trend rather than a change in level.

Universe and sources. The county set includes 59 high-growth Sunbelt counties. Migration flows are drawn from county-to-county data provided by Constellation Data Labs and normalized by Census housing units. Permits come from the Census Building Permits Survey. The analysis reflects a pure cross-section: one exposure metric per county, one outcome metric per county, and a Pearson correlation across the sample. The choice of cycles matters. The comparison is intentionally between a long post-GFC expansion and the pandemic era that followed, when costs, rates, and procurement conditions changed materially. If migrant political preferences were a meaningful new brake on permitting, the second cycle should show it.

THE CORE FINDING: A SURPRISING DISCONNECT

Exhibit 1 plots the change in restrictive-origin in-migration rate against the change in permitting rate. The regression line is essentially flat (r ≈ +0.08). Using 2020–24 exposure levels instead of changes also yields no relationship (r ≈ −0.11).

Some outliers are noteworthy:

• Acceleration with meaningful exposure:
  • Pinal County, AZ sits in the top quartile for NIMBY exposure yet accelerated permitting by approximately 6 percentage points (pp).
  • Orange County, FL accelerated by approximately 12 pp despite slightly lower NIMBY inflow than last cycle.
• Standout slowdowns (not explained by migration composition):
  • Broward County, FL slowed approximately 29 pp.
  • DeKalb County, GA and Denver County, CO registered the steepest declines (approximately 35 pp and approximately 33 pp, respectively).

The slowdown from 2012–19 to 2020–24 is broad: 49 of 59 counties (83%) show a negative delta (mean −10.5 pp). Grouping counties into quartiles by 2020–24 NIMBY exposure shows no meaningful gradient: Q1 −12.4 pp, Q2 −7.7 pp, Q3 −9.3 pp, Q4 −12.5 pp. Exposure does not explain who slowed.

Heterogeneity within the exposure groups is large. Among higher-exposure counties, some slowed, some held steady, and some accelerated. Among lower-exposure counties, the same. In Texas, both Dallas County (−20.1 pp) and Harris County (−10.5 pp) slowed despite low exposure. The driver is apparently not the origin share.

There is no evidence in this cross-section that the share of newcomers from restrictive states explains which Sunbelt counties slowed and by how much. To the extent supply elasticity has declined in parts of the Sunbelt, the decline looks endogenous to local rules and capacity. It is not obvious that it is being “voted in” by coastal movers.

WHY THE MIGRATION STORY PERSISTS

The migration story feels right because it links visible facts to a familiar political frame. People did move from high-cost, high-regulation states to the Sunbelt. Many Sunbelt counties did slow their permitting. It is an easy step to connect those dots. But there are at least three reasons to be cautious of extrapolating too much from these trends.

First, entitlement is administrative as much as it is political. County commissions, planning boards, plan reviewers, and building departments set timelines and throughput. Staffing ratios and process design matter. Agenda management matters. The effect size from adding reviewers or streamlining checklists can be large relative to any marginal change in voter composition.

Second, fiscal and infrastructure constraints can act as brakes irrespective of politics. Impact fee schedules, concurrency triggers, utility capacity, evacuation standards, and bond cycles all feed into latent speed. These are technical, not ideological.

Third, the pandemic-to-rates regime change altered the economics of construction everywhere. Labor, materials, financing, and duration risk all moved against faster delivery. In many counties, those macro headwinds were powerful enough to dominate marginal shifts in voter sentiment.

WHAT THE PATTERN DOES SUGGEST

Two trends are useful for underwriting.

Institutional capacity converts demand into supply. Counties that can permit at pace tend to share features investors can verify: clear by-right approvals for core products, code updates that allow more units per acre in select locations, predictable calendars for reviews and hearings, and state-level laws that pre-empt the most exclusionary local tactics. Pinal, AZ shows that even high-exposure destinations can keep permitting if throughput is there.

Homegrown policy headwinds dominate slowdowns. Where permit momentum collapsed, review the process, not the demographics. Concurrency, coastal or environmental overlays, rising fees, added discretionary review, and more litigation or appeals will all show up as longer timelines, wider variance, and higher soft costs. Broward’s pattern is consistent with that playbook.

FINDING SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

Our primary takeaway is that the narrative that links supply outcomes to the origin of in-migrants doesn’t hold up to the data upon inspection. The slowdown between cycles is broad, but its distribution is best explained by local policy and capacity, not by voter importation.

Where the opportunity sits depends on strategy.

For development capital, favor counties that match growth with approvals. The ability to obtain approvals consistently is a real spread in this cost and rate environment. Jurisdictions with stable by-right paths and faster plan checks reduce duration risk and support higher hit rates on starts.

For acquisition strategies, lower near-term supply can benefit incumbents via tighter occupancies and firmer rent growth. That benefit is real, but may not be without cost. Supply scarcity that comes from unpredictable review or rising fees tends to add volatility and headline risk, and can attract state-level intervention if it goes too far (in the Sunbelt). If the business plan requires consistent expansions or heavy CapEx that triggers new approvals, a low-throughput county can potentially be a liability for an owner.

For both developers and acquisition strategies, mispriced perceptions exist. Some counties that are caricatured as “overheated” in-migration destinations remain surprisingly permissive on the entitlement side. A clear-eyed read of comprehensive plans, recent text amendments, and actual commission calendars often surfaces shovel-ready pockets that the consensus overlooks. Conversely, some counties with modest exposure can be quietly hostile in practice. A desk review will miss this. Calls with planning directors, line reviewers, and municipal attorneys will not.

HOW TO OPERATIONALIZE THE DILIGENCE

Investment firms could do well to build a throughput scorecard. For example, rating counties on five verifiable factors: share of by-right approvals, average days in site-plan review based on recent dockets, stability of impact and utility fee schedules, observed variance between posted timelines and actual issuance dates, and degree of state pre-emption of local exclusionary tools. Investors could back test the scorecard against the permit trend delta across cycles to validate the assumptions and model used and use it to screen where sponsors deserve a higher risk premium.

Additionally, firms could track sub-county deltas. County averages hide city-level variation. Cities with form-based codes or mixed-use overlays can keep producing even when county totals fall. Shift site selection accordingly.

Forward-thinking developers could engage early where veto points concentrate. If design review or planning commission discretion is the binding constraint, invest upfront in higher-credibility design teams and deeper neighborhood engagement to de-risk hearings.

And finally, all investors can price the carry costs based on more granular understandings of the likely permitting paths. Required returns should reflect realistic cycle times. Use historical issuance age and observed variance, not posted targets. Model more attrition in the entitlement funnel when the docket shows more continuances per case.

WHAT NOT TO OVER-INFER FROM MIGRATION DATA

Two potential messages are worth considering.

Population growth still drives demand. Net in-migration is a fundamental driver of household formation and property occupancy levels. The point here is narrower. The composition of that migration by origin is not a primary determinant of supply momentum at the county level across these two cycles. Demand analysis and supply analysis should be kept distinct.

Politics evolve under institutional constraints. Newcomers do not vote monolithically. State pre-emption can neutralize local anti-growth coalitions. Decentralized veto points can stall even pro-growth majorities. The practical lesson is the same: underwrite the rules and the staff that apply them.

ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL

The idea that coastal movers are exporting anti-growth preferences to the Sunbelt is not supported by the data: across 59 counties, whether you look at changes or levels of NIMBY exposure, the correlation with permitting momentum is near zero. However, it is also not supported by a simple match of exposure to outcome. Across 59 Sunbelt counties, the correlation between the share of newcomers from restrictive states and the change in permitting momentum from the expansion to the pandemic-and-rates period is near zero. Some high-exposure counties accelerated. Some low-exposure counties slowed.

The determinant is local: codes, fees, overlays, staffing, calendars, and the state framework around them. Investors cannot rely on a national narrative and instead must focus on a repeatable, local edge and market knowledge. The path to that edge could be a throughput scorecard, sub-county targeting, early engagement where veto points concentrate, and carry pricing that reflects observed practice rather than posted timelines. Capital that does this will find markets where demand still becomes supply, where execution is possible, and where risk is paid to wait. Capital that bets on demographic origin stories will miss both the pitfalls and the opportunities that only show up in the docket.

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