8 Reasons People Are Leaving Texas in 2026

No state added more new residents last year than Texas.

And no state sent more of its own people out the door, either.

The net gain from other states has shrunk from about 222,000 a few years back to under 70,000, a slowdown you can feel on every U-Haul lot from El Paso to Texarkana.

These are the reasons the folks packing up keep giving in 2026.

Note: This is general information, not financial, tax, or insurance advice. Rates, premiums, and dollar amounts are subject to change.

1. Property Tax Bill

The first reason many people give for leaving Texas has nothing to do with income tax, since there isn’t one.

The state makes up the difference on your house.

Texas carries the seventh highest property tax burden in the country, with a median bill around $4,232 a year.

That’s up from about $3,872 just two years earlier.

Appraisals rose through the boom, and homeowners watched the tax bill rise the same amount.

A retiree on a fixed income sees that bill land higher every single January.

No paycheck, but a bigger bill every year.

The mortgage ends.

The tax bill doesn’t.

A homeowner who paid off the loan decades ago still writes the county a four-figure check every year, with no end date.

2. Home Insurance That Keeps Jumping

Right behind the tax bill sits the insurance bill.

It has gotten ugly.

The average Texas homeowner now pays around $4,915 a year to insure a home, close to double the national average.

That’s four figures a year.

Premiums across the state jumped roughly 60% between 2019 and 2024, per the Dallas Fed, while the rest of the country saw about half that.

Hail on the plains, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, and wildfire risk out west all feed the same rising number.

Stack that on the mortgage and the tax escrow, and the monthly cost of simply owning a place in Texas stops looking like a bargain.

Some owners run the numbers and decide another state’s storms are cheaper to insure against.

3. Getting Dropped Altogether

Paying the premium is one problem for Texas homeowners.

Keeping the policy at all is another.

More insurers are simply walking away from certain zip codes.

Complaints to state regulators about non-renewals more than doubled in a single year, reaching 190 complaints filed with the Texas Department of Insurance.

A carrier will point to a hail map and cut a homeowner loose, even after years of on-time payments.

No claim required.

Losing coverage means scrambling for a pricier policy or leaning on the state’s last-resort plan, and neither feels like a reward for owning a home in the Panhandle or along the coast.

For a family on the coast, the choice can narrow to the state’s high-priced last-resort plan or no coverage at all.

4. Losing Faith in the Grid

Ask anyone who lived through February 2021 why they’d leave, and the power grid comes up fast.

That winter storm knocked out heat and water for millions and left 246 people dead, by the state’s own official count.

Nobody forgot.

The trust never fully came back.

Every summer since, residents watch their phones for another conservation alert from the grid operator that runs most of the state on its own island.

Demand keeps setting records, with the operator forecasting a peak near 92.2 gigawatts this summer, well past the old high.

Power-hungry data centers and crypto mines keep piling on the demand, and Texas runs its own grid, walled off from the two national networks, so there’s nowhere to borrow power when it strains.

5. Electric Bills That Keep Rising

Even when the grid holds, the bill to run it has become its own reason to leave Texas.

The average price residents pay for electricity has risen close to 30% since 2020, according to federal energy data.

Ouch.

Now picture the air conditioner running from April into October, since in most of the state it does.

A three-figure summer electric bill is normal from Houston to Lubbock, and the deregulated market means shopping for a plan is basically a part-time job.

Cheap power was part of the old sales pitch.

For households doing the math on a fixed budget, that edge has worn thin, and the air conditioner runs the meter hard from spring to fall.

6. Heat That Won't Quit

Many Texans have always bragged about handling the heat, but the last few summers tested even the natives.

2023 went down as the hottest year ever recorded in the state.

Big Bend hit 119 degrees.

Stretches of triple-digit afternoons run for weeks at a time, the kind that keep kids inside and turn a walk to the mailbox into a chore.

For someone with a heart condition or young children, a summer like that isn't a punchline anymore.

It's a health calculation.

State climate records show every year since 2000 has run warmer than the 20th-century average, so those brutal summers aren't a fluke anymore.

7. Worries About Water

Behind the heat sits another Texas problem that has people rethinking the long term: The water.

Drought has pushed several communities to the edge.

Reservoirs are dropping.

Corpus Christi has scrambled to drill emergency wells as its reservoirs run low, and state planners now say Texas needs $174 billion over the next 50 years to avoid a real crisis.

Supplies are projected to fall about 10% by 2080 as the population keeps booming.

Watering restrictions and brown lawns are already a summer ritual across much of the state.

A younger family weighing where to put down roots for the next 40 years reads those headlines and pauses.

Some decide not to gamble on the tap.

8. Cost of Living Caught Up

Put all of it together and you get the reason that ties the rest into a knot: Texas stopped being cheap.

Median home prices rose about 40% between 2019 and 2023, and paychecks never kept pace.

The gap widened.

The state's own numbers tell the story.

In 2019, a typical family earned well more than enough to afford a mid-priced home.

By 2023, that cushion had all but vanished.

Add the tax bill, the insurance, the power, and the water worries, and the famous Texas discount is mostly a memory.

Transplants who came chasing affordability a few years ago are the most likely to leave chasing it again, this time to Tennessee, the Carolinas, or back home.

Texas Is Still Growing

Texas still added more residents than any other state last year, and the raw numbers show it.

The state gained 391,243 new residents in 2025.

Still number one.

The shift is in the mix underneath that number.

Net gains from other states have cooled sharply, from about 222,000 in 2022 down to roughly 67,000.

Births and international arrivals now do most of the heavy lifting on population, not the domestic move-ins that defined the last decade.