America’s Great Investment Firm Migration Reveals Sun Belt Reaped Multi-Trillion Dollar Reward
BY TYLER DURDEN via Zero Hedge
Major cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles punished investment firms with high tax rates and a lack of business-friendly policies that only sparked an exodus during Covid. Progressive city leaders in these metro areas also implemented failed social justice reforms that unleashed a crime wave and exacerbated the exodus. Many of these firms fled to Florida, Texas, and other Sun Belt states.
From 1Q20 through the end of 1Q23, Bloomberg data shows more than 370 investment firms — or about 2.5% of the US total — with $2.7 trillion assets under management — moved their offices to a new state.
“The vast majority of the migration was out of high-cost-of-living locales in the Northeast and on the West Coast and into Florida, Texas, and other Sun Belt refuges,” Bloomberg said.
The exodus of investment firms from crime-ridden and high-taxed Northeast and West Coast cities show Florida, Tennessee, and Texas were some of the top destinations. While the South booms, the exodus has left northern cities with weakening commercial property markets and a decline in tax revenues that could soon strain local budgets.