When Christine Allison, our editor-in-chief and CEO, mentioned last year that she’d like to know more about all of these East and West Coasters choosing to make their homes in North Texas, we were quick to get on board with the idea.
Last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas asked a simple question: would the pandemic change the pattern of Americans moving to Texas from big coastal cities?
The Fed used credit reports to learn that migration to the Lone Star State actually increased from 2020 to 2021, far surpassing pre-pandemic trends. After that report, Census data made it official. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan statistical area welcomed just under 55,000 new Texans from other states, trailing only Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler in raw growth.
There are some quirks in the data; Dallas County actually lost people in 2021, while suburban counties like Denton and Collin posted some of the highest numeric growth in the country. Dallas would have slipped even further had it not been for all these newcomers.
So who are they? California, New York, and Illinois brought us more new neighbors than any other states. The Fed attributes that movement to “plentiful job opportunities, an accommodative business environment, and a relatively low cost of living.”
That’s all well and good—and very academic. We thought it would help to go inside their homes, learn what it was about North Texas that attracted them here.
So for the July issue, we sat down with five families in their spectacular homes to talk about why they chose to move to Dallas in the last year or two and confirm our own life choices. We talked with Shondaland COO Megha Tolia and her husband, former Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia; headband queen Lele Sadoughi; artist Donald Robertson; Journey of a Braid founder Danié Gómez-Ortigoza and her husband, wine exec Nicolas Guillant; and designer Sharon Lee.
You can now peek inside their homes. The story is online today.
Authors
Kathy Wise
View Profile
