AUSTIN, Texas — Soaring property values in California have made many homeowners there rich -- and many real estate agents here delighted. In an exodus that some demographers say could reshape the American landscape, young professional families are increasingly fleeing the exorbitant coast for Austin, Dallas or San Antonio, for Atlanta, Denver or Phoenix, for Charlotte, N.C.
They're selling their cramped "starter homes" in California, some worth $500,000 or more, and buying luxury homes, for cash, in the nation's interior.
John and Nicole Hutmacher will be moving here this summer, leaving a tract home in a jam-packed subdivision in Santa Rosa in Northern California for a 3,000-square-foot estate on an acre in a gated community overlooking central Texas' rippled hills. They'll have enough money left over to buy a boat and a pickup, even to see the world.
"We wanted to do more with our money than pay for a house," said John Hutmacher, 27, an engineer who can work from anywhere in the country. "We want to travel. Eventually, we want to have children." In California, he said, "we couldn't afford to."
It's hard to quantify exactly how many families are joining the Hutmachers in sacrificing day trips to the beach in favor of bigger homes, smaller mortgages and shorter commutes.
The 2000 census tracked movement of college graduates around the country and found the metropolitan areas around Atlanta, Dallas, Denver and Phoenix were top magnets. (San Francisco made the list, though demographers say it's attracting more single dot-com workers than young families.) Experts say the migration inward has accelerated since the census, as housing prices in California and New England have soared.
Calling the shift dramatic, demographer William Frey has dubbed the Southwest and Southeast the nation's "brain gainers." A scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, Frey sees a "smart belt" emerging in the Sun Belt.
Real estate agents see it too.
"I'm flooded with clients from California," said Larry Regan, a broker in Dallas.
"It's so exciting to work with them because everything looks great to them," said Kristal Kraft, who sells homes in Denver.
In Atlanta, Ellen Crawford recalls one gleeful refugee from high-priced New Jersey who kissed her hands after she sold him a four-bedroom house in the sought-after suburb of Alpharetta for $189,000. Compared to the coasts, Crawford said, "homes are practically for free here."
