Fleeing for their futures, a California exodus – Business News
California’s self-inflicted financial wounds have reached a fever pitch in 2026.
Strapped with record-high gasoline costs, a staggering $31 billion transit deficit and a radical billionaire wealth tax heading to the poll this November, the Golden State is witnessing an unprecedented mass migration.
It is no longer simply a working-class flight; California’s elite are actively being courted by pro-business states, prompting luxurious billboards to inform Angelenos they need to “move to Miami, where they are not being persecuted for having extreme wealth.”
As ultra-high-net-worth consumers completely sever their West Coast ties, city affairs and real estate consultants warn that the progressive enclave is “careening towards a very, very difficult period,” leaving a hollowed-out center class left behind to bail out the deficit.
“We started to see the outmigration. It was very concentrated among poor, working-class people who were reacting to changes in the economy and prices. Increasingly, the people leaving are wealthier,” Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin informed Fox News Digital. “And that means that they’re taking their tax dollars with them. So states like Florida and Texas gain enormously from this kind of trade, both from New York and from California in particular. So one of the things it’s going to do is it’s gonna put pressure on the remaining middle class to bail it out.”
Pro-business states like Florida are luring ultra-high-net-worth people . mark – stock.adobe.com
“The fact that you’re paying more in income tax than you take home yourself on an annual basis is madness to me,” mentioned RIVANI President and founder Robert Rivani, who moved his household and business real estate firm from L.A. to Miami in 2020. “I’d be somewhat OK with even paying that high tax rate if we didn’t have our economy falling apart, if we didn’t have such a massive increase in homelessness, if we [didn’t] have such a mass increase in crime. You’re paying all this money, but for what?”
“It’s really sad,” Douglas Elliman’s Cory Weiss added. “Some people have no choice but to leave.”
California faces a essential turning level with a multibillion-dollar transportation funding hole, high vitality prices, an upcoming November poll measure for a controversial billionaire tax and staggering exodus numbers — notably together with Los Angeles County shedding more than 54,000 residents in a single 12 months.
What’s more, Weiss argued that allowing delays have slowed rebuilding efforts, saying about 25% to 30% of Palisades and Eaton fire victims will rebuild whereas most will stroll away. The deciding issue is usually not want, however fairly the maths surrounding insurance coverage disputes, labor shortages, allowing delays and rebuilding prices.
The “final nail in the coffin” for Rivani – who facilitated the California-to-Florida company relocations for Playboy and “Shark Tank” investor Daymond John – was shedding his Malibu home to a previous wildfire: “I thought California was going towards communism… We couldn’t have enough funding for enough firefighters or enough public support… I’d rather be the person that’s ahead of the trend, and that’s why I decided to move to Florida, I said, ‘I’m done with it.’”
Florida grew to become a main beneficiary of migration from high-tax states, attracting billions of {dollars} in luxurious real estate investments from figures together with Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel and Larry Ellison. This shift occurred alongside a broader national trend that noticed almost $1 trillion in property underneath management relocate from states corresponding to California and New York to Sun Belt states, in accordance with industry estimates.
Los Angeles County misplaced more than 54,000 residents in a single 12 months. Newport Coast Media – stock.adobe.com
It’s a sort of “gold rush” that Douglas Elliman’s No. 1 agent nationwide, Dina Goldentayer, is capitalizing on. She launched billboards throughout Los Angeles that includes her face and a $79.5 million itemizing that learn: “Your wealth is wanted. Step inside with me. #MoveToMiami.”
“There’s obviously a little bit of satire there. The house that’s on the billboard is my $79 million listing in Golden Beach, so there’s definitely a target market for whom that billboard is intended for,” Goldentayer informed Fox News Digital. “The calls that I receive are mostly from people already in my network, top brokers out in the L.A., Beverly Hills market who we share some good laughs about the messaging of the billboard. My clients with whom I’m already working with, they think that it is brilliant.”
“Every buyer over $30 million that I’m working with currently is from California… It absolutely picked up right at the tail end of the year when the Google founders were purchasing property in Miami,” she added. “As far as the ultra-high-net-worth individuals, the billionaires, they obviously don’t feel wanted in the blue states. They are not being loved in Manhattan and Los Angeles and markets of similarity. So it is being signaled that Florida wants you.”
“There is zero income tax here, zero. It is still a thriving economy,” Rivani mentioned of Florida. “Yeah, you’re taxing people in California and in New York over 50%, and the economy keeps falling apart and people keep running away. So taxing the rich and getting nothing for it, not only for the wealthy people but for the economy and the people, itself, is a zero-sum solution. It does not work.”
“My entire family is still in California. We left all of our family. My parents don’t get to see their grandchild that we had here in South Florida. So it’s devastating not to be able to have those intimate moments with your family,” Rivani continued. “But then, at the end of the day, I had to say enough is enough, and I had to think for the benefit of my family and their future. And if I saw that there was a potential [for] comeback or change in the near future, I would have stayed and stuck it through. I just don’t see that happening.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass during a debate with metropolis council member Nithya Raman. Jonathan Alcorn for CA Post
“If you’re going to really maintain a low-employment welfare state, which is where California is going,” Kotkin cautioned, “you’re going to have to tax the hell out of the middle and upper middle class, because that’s where the money is. And I think that’s going to be what will come next.”
“Part of the problem is that you’re paying these prices that you have no choice about… Whether the wealth tax passes or not, I don’t think it will make a big difference one way or the other, but what it does say if you’re a business owner, what are they going to get after next?” the professor expanded. “You have a legislature that is completely controlled by the public employees. And so, well, the public employee is in their immediate self-interest to tax people as much as possible. The problem is nobody has explained to them that eventually, you do run out of money, and eventually they’re going to have to be some sort of cutbacks. I think California right now is careening towards a very, very difficult period. And I don’t see it turning around, at least in the immediate future.”
Weiss has seen a comparable decline, arguing that California’s favorable climate is probably not enough to maintain its real estate market, regardless of remaining optimistic in regards to the dozens of fire sufferer households he’s helped relocate.
“We’ve had people say, ‘OK we’re going back,’ and then they started the construction process, and they said, ‘You know, I can’t do it. It’s too sad. It’s not the same community,’” Weiss mirrored. “Very, very close clients of mine, who were fortunate enough to be able to buy another house, but were going to rebuild and they have a premier lot, have just this week decided that they’re not gonna rebuild… It is still tragic for people. People are healing and then processing, but it is very emotional.”
“I invite Mayor Bass or Gavin Newsom to [hop] right in my car and go sit in some of these families’ living rooms with me and see what they’re up against financially. I’ll be more than happy to sit down,” the agent added. “This isn’t just high-end problems.”
Mayor Karen Bass’ workplace didn’t reply to a number of interview requests from Fox News Digital. Though Gov. Newsom is just not working for re-election this 12 months, he has been publicly outspoken towards the proposed billionaire tax and was reportedly left sick upon studying of his state’s wealth outmigration.
California Governor Gavin Newsom talking on the Center for American Progress Ideas Conference. REUTERS
“I feel a great sense of loss and disappointment that I really can’t suggest to my daughters that they live in California. I think that it’s a very sad thing to see a place that, when I arrived in 1971, this was the place to be,” Kotkin mentioned. “I think we’re eating our seed corn. We’re no longer this destination for talent from around the world the way we once were… Whether the California Dream is gone for good is, I still think it’s uncertain. But I think the state has to make some real changes. One, it’s got to move away from the current climate regime… Unless there’s some sort of major change, it will continue to become both the place of greatest wealth and of the most intense poverty. And I think that’s a tragedy and I think it’s a violation of what California is all about.”
“Everyone always says to me, California has got to come back. Did Detroit ever come back? Did Minnesota ever come back?” Rivani mentioned from his $100 million Class X workplace that’s making ready to open in Miami Beach. “Our gas price is half the cost of California. Our living prices are still cheaper than California, but most of all, whether you’re a low-income earner or a high-income earner, you pay zero income tax. That allows more money into your family’s pocket day-to-day.”
“I think this is just the beginning of Miami’s gold rush. I think it’s just the beginning of the gold rush of South Florida as a whole,” Rivani mentioned. “There’s literally nothing that [California] could do that would ever make me want to invest in a state like that again, I mean, unless there is a complete upheaval of the financial beliefs of that economy, I just, I can’t do it.”
“Just call the U-Haul company, get your butt on the truck, and get your ass out here because you’re going to miss the gold rush.”
