“’Like, wait, I can have that?’”

Ryan Petersen
Newly relocated from Orange County, California, to Dallas
.…echoing what Californians often say when they see home prices in the Dallas area, via USA Today.

In June, we wrote about the “Texodus” of Californians moving to Dallas, traveling what StorageCafe called “the leading interstate relocation route in the U.S.” One big lure? Up to a 258% difference in listing prices ($410,000 in Dallas County vs. $1,467,000 in Santa Clara delivers a savings of more than $1 million).

The trend grabbed attention from coast to coast last week when USA Today reported on it in a story titled “‘We kept getting outbid‘: Californians moving to Texas explain why they’re changing states.”

The national newspaper profiled three couples who made the move—including two who chose Dallas and Prosper in North Texas for their new addresses.

Petersen and his wife, Erika Dominguez, were paying $2,400 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Orange County and tried to buy a home there. “But we kept getting outbid on condos and townhomes, and we’d get outbid by 150 grand,” Petersen, who worked for a startup, told USA Today.

When they looked into the Dallas area, Petersen and Dominguez were “shocked” to discover what they could get in North Texas. They ended up moving to the Dallas area and in May 2022 bought “a four-bedroom, three-bath, 2,800 square feet home with an office on a 9,000-square-foot lot for $500,000—$25,000 above asking.”

USA Today profiled another California transplant couple who built their own sprawling new 5,000-square-foot house in Prosper for “around $780,000.”

“That’s about what we sold our 1,500 square-foot house in Seal Beach [California] for,” Marie Bailey told USA Today.

You can read the USA Today story here.

For more of who said what about all things North Texas, check out Every Last Word.