Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Few Californians are likely to move to Utah due to wildfires and high housing costs.
- Salt Lake City isn't a top choice; many prefer San Diego, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.
- Experts attribute moves mainly to affordability, not climate concerns, despite wildfire risks.
SALT LAKE CITY — More Californians may be moving to Utah as a result of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires.
They're looking for lower housing costs, especially since the deadly blazes are likely to boost already high prices in Los Angeles, Daryl Fairweather, chief economist for the nation's largest brokerage website, Seattle-based Redfin, told the Deseret News.
"Los Angeles is the top feeder market into Salt Lake City, so we think there could be an uptick in the number of people leaving Los Angeles for Salt Lake City because of the worsening affordability from these fires," Fairweather said.
Wildfires have destroyed more than 10,000 homes ranging from beachfront mansions to middle-class bungalows and have killed at least 28 people since Jan. 7, and continue to be fueled by fierce winds and dry conditions.
The impact on housing is serious.
"I think that the L.A. wildfires are going to make Los Angeles less affordable to live in," Fairweather said. "The wildfires depleted the stock of housing in Los Angeles by a significant amount and that should push up rents and home prices."
While the Salt Lake area was recently designated one of the nation's hottest housing markets for 2025, she said the median home price is nearly half of the $1 million it costs to buy in Los Angeles.
Where do LA residents displaced by wildfire want to live?
Still, Redfin data shows that the Salt Lake area isn't among the top choices for L.A. residents seeking to relocate.
"Many more people are going to places like San Diego, Las Vegas, Bakersfield, Phoenix, than are going to Salt Lake City," Fairweather said, citing as an example 5,000 Redfin users looking to depart L.A. for Las Vegas, compared to 800 for Salt Lake.
The list of the Top 10 metropolitan areas that Redfin users want to leave Los Angeles for isn't confined to the west, she said. After San Diego, Las Vegas, Bakersfield and Phoenix, the leading destinations are Nashville, Portland, Dallas, San Luis Obispo and Boise.
The analysis used to develop the list is based on about 2 million Redfin users who searched for homes across more than 100 metropolitan areas, viewing at least 10 homes over a three-month period, Fairweather said.
Ryan Dickey, a real estate agent with Windermere Real Estate in Park City, said he hasn't heard of any of the company's 400 agents in Utah being contacted by someone wanting to move from California because of the wildfires.
"California is our No. 1 feeder market. And it's on fire. What does that mean?" Dickey said, noting that with only a small share of the Californians impacted by the wildfires likely to come to Utah, "you're not actually talking about that many people."
In the end, he said, the numbers might not even be noticeable.
"You wonder if we would feel it here," Dickey said. "It's already such an attractive place to move."
Fairweather said she anticipates more Californians calling Utah home even though the wildfire risk is higher, with 52% of properties in the Salt Lake area deemed at risk in one survey compared to 30% for Los Angeles.
Despite entire communities being all but wiped out by the wildfires, she said the Californians looking to move out of state amid the devastation are focused on finding a place to live that they can afford.
"Usually, people aren't moving for climate reasons, they're moving for affordability reasons," she said. "So I think that would be the main driver."
How will the L.A. wildfires affect the Las Vegas housing market?
Las Vegas is betting on new transplants from Los Angeles as a result of the fires.
"It's all over the news, everyone is talking about it, even in neighboring states like here in Nevada, and the market starts to react," Shawn McCoy, director and associate professor for UNLV's Lied Center for Real Estate, recently told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
California's wildfires also may affect the Las Vegas rental market, McCoy said.
"We may certainly see the fires in L.A. place upward pressure on rent locally in Las Vegas, both as a result of displaced L.A. households whose homes were damaged, but also from two other important groups," he told the Las Vegas newspaper.
"Households near the wildfires but that were not directly affected by the fires may now hold a heightened awareness or concern of potential future fires and act on that heightened awareness by moving out," he said. "This may be especially true given research which shows that about 18 percent of the housing stock in the Palisades is multifamily housing."
Seeing entire neighborhoods destroyed in the wildfires also may be giving some would-be Angelenos second thoughts, the real estate professor said.
"Think, for example, about households currently outside of L.A. or even the state of California who were in the process of considering a move to LA. These fires may change these households' perception of L.A. fire risk and instead of moving to L.A. to rent, they may instead turn to other cities including Las Vegas," McCoy said.
How many Californians move to Utah?
Nevada has the nation's fifth-highest share of Californians moving in, behind Texas, Arizona, Florida and Washington, according to a 2022 U.S. Census Bureau survey, while Utah ranks 15th, with less than 19,000 compared to more than 102,000 for Texas.
In Utah, one of every five in-migrants came from California , according to the most recent data cited by the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Only international migrants accounted for more new Utah residents.
But, the institute pointed out in a July 2024 report, nearly one in four of Utah's California in-migrants was born in the Beehive State, indicating "some return migration, or Utahns who left the state at one point but returned."
