As More Tech Workers Are Laid Off, Homeowners Are On the Move Again

The world of tech has been roiled by waves of layoffs. So far this year, more than 142,000 workers at major tech companies have lost their jobs—many due to AI-related cuts. Meta is laying off 8,000 workers to offset the cost of AI investments, while potentially redirecting 7,000 more toward AI-related roles. 

That makes these layoffs different from temporary setbacks. Rather, they are seemingly permanent shifts in what these companies need in a workforce. 

As the layoffs continue in tech epicenters such as San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City, those in the real estate world are wondering whether such massive changes might lead to a shift in where tech workers live. Will they decamp for more affordable markets, shedding their homes on the way out?

Data from Realtor.com® suggests the answer is messier than a clean exodus story. Some markets near the biggest layoff corridors are already showing strain. A handful of secondary cities are quietly absorbing talent. And many of the workers aren’t planning to go anywhere.

The layoff map

Oracle, Amazon, Meta, and Dell shed thousands of tech jobs in the first quarter of 2026 alone—the highest first-quarter total since 2023. Those companies are clustered in a short list of metros: the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and the Texas triangle of Austin, Dallas, and Round Rock. That concentration matters because it means the housing fallout isn’t evenly distributed.

In Mountain View, CA, and Bellevue, WA—two of the densest layoff ZIP codes in the country—it’s already showing up in the data. According to Realtor.com data, both markets recorded their highest April inventory levels since 2017 in 2026, while listing prices fell year over year. Whether that reflects laid-off workers listing their homes, nervous buyers sitting on the sidelines, or both, it’s clear the market is in flux.

Where people are searching

Realtor.com cross-market search traffic analysis offers a real-time window into where nervous and displaced workers are considering going, with one surprising destination appearing at the forefront. Menlo Park, the peninsula city at the center of Silicon Valley’s biggest employers, isn’t sending its searchers to another coastal tech hub or a Sun Belt standby. They’re looking at Utah’s tech hub.

“Salt Lake City appeared as the top destination for shoppers from Menlo Park in Q1 2026,” says Jiayi Xu, economist at Realtor.com.

A year ago, that would have seemed unlikely. In the first quarter of 2025, Salt Lake City captured just 0.6% of out-of-state search traffic from Menlo Park homebuyers. By first quarter 2026, that number had jumped to 3.6%—a six-fold increase in 12 months.

Elsewhere in the Bay Area, San Francisco tells a similar, if less dramatic, story. Thirty percent of online home searches from the city crossed state lines in the first quarter of 2026, with Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Reno, NV, leading the way. Dallas is also quietly gaining ground—it captured 2.8% of San Francisco’s out-of-state traffic a year ago and has since grown to 3.2%.

Seattle stands apart from the Bay Area in one important way: Its residents appear far more willing to look elsewhere. Nearly 70% of online searches from Seattle crossed state lines in the first quarter of 2026, up from 65% a year earlier—more than double the out-of-state search rate of San Francisco. Portland, OR, Coeur d’Alene, ID, and Phoenix all showed up near the top of the destination list.

Most workers probably aren’t leaving just yet

The search numbers are real, but they may be about window shopping as much as they are true life planning. They shouldn’t be mistaken for a migration wave—at least not yet.

“Most displaced tech workers will likely remain in the same region for much longer,” says Ben Mizes, president of Clever Real Estate. “Employees will remain where they have the most equity, such as a professional and social network, a spouse, their children, schools, and industry resources. Regions such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, and New York offer the best opportunities to find another high-paying tech job.”

For the workers who do relocate, Mizes says the decision tends to be about balance rather than escape.

“Those who relocate will likely choose cities that offer tech-adjacent affordability—relatively less expensive housing, good schools, a good airport, and a good, not-too-large tech industry, which allows working in a tech-related area without feeling isolated,” says Mizes. 

For families, especially, the math isn’t about finding the cheapest market. It’s about finding somewhere that works on multiple fronts at once.

“The most significant change I expect will not be a large tech employee exodus from the Bay Area and Silicon Valley,” says Mizes. “It will be a more restrictive migration, from the ultrahigh-cost-of-living areas to cities that are more affordable but still offer a quality of life that balances work, the likely tech-worker lifestyle, and family life.”

The states that are gaining ground

So, where is the talent actually landing? 

California, New York, and Texas still dominate raw tech employment—524,000, 286,000, and 226,000 workers, respectively, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by Visual Capitalist. But all three shed jobs in 2025. The growth is happening in smaller markets.

Utah posted 6.3% tech job growth in 2025, the fastest rate in the country, despite a relatively modest base of 44,000 workers. Illinois grew 5.7%, and Colorado by 4.6%.

The Realtor.com inbound traffic data confirms the pull. In Utah, the share of homebuyers arriving from the San Jose metro more than doubled year over year — from 1.4% in the first quarter of 2025 to 3.0% in the same quarter in 2026. Traffic from Seattle rose from 1.6% to 2.2% over the same period. Colorado showed similar movement, with San Jose’s inbound share growing from 1.0% to 1.6%.

What this means for housing markets

Tech workers, even recently laid-off ones, tend to arrive in new markets with meaningful purchasing power: home equity, vested stock, and higher-than-average savings. That kind of buyer can move a market, especially in cities where inventory has started to loosen.

Salt Lake City, Denver, and Raleigh, NC, have already absorbed earlier waves of tech migration and seen sustained price appreciation as a result. Another round of high-earning arrivals, even a modest one, could retighten competition in markets that buyers had started to reclaim.

What’s harder to know is whether any of this represents a permanent reordering or just another blip in a decade’s worth of tech migration patterns that have repeatedly failed to materialize the way forecasters predicted. Workers are searching. Some are moving. Most aren’t just yet. The data is early, the layoffs are ongoing, and things may look very different by the end of 2026.