Exodus continues as more than 10,000 New Yorkers have moved to Florida in 2023

 

It wasn’t just a pandemic thing.

Another disillusioned batch of more than 10,000 New Yorkers relinquished their driver’s licenses for the Florida version in the first quarter of 2023, extending an ongoing exodus into the Sunshine State.

According to new figures from the Florida Department of Highway Safety, 10,824 Empire Staters swapped out their licenses in the first three months of this year.

The metric is considered a reliable indicator of migration patterns as it suggests a long-term decision to relocate.

While the pace remains brisk, the stampede out of New York slowed markedly compared to the same record-setting stretch last year.

In the first quarter of 2022, a staggering 14,834 New Yorkers cut bait on the Big Apple and moved their licenses to Florida.

A Naples broker told The Post this week that this slowdown was inevitable, highlighting soaring mortgage rates, low housing inventory and spiking Florida home prices.

“That was just unsustainable,” she said.

“I have clients who were set to move and just couldn’t make the numbers work anymore. This isn’t the same Florida as five years ago.”

She also noted that some remote workers who planned to migrate have either been called back into their New York offices or didn’t feel confident that they would be able to remain off-site indefinitely.

However in January Office occupancy in New York City was still only around 54%.

Fed up with rising crime, taxes and what many emigres decry as a declining quality of life, more Gothamites and upstaters moved to Florida in 2022 than any prior year in history.

Despite the end of COVID-19 restrictions and a return to quasi-normalcy, a total of 64,577 New Yorkers switched their licenses to Florida last year, according to agency figures.

The migration figures are backed up by US census bureau data released this week which showed Kings, Queens and Bronx counties in New York among the five losing the most people in the country between July 2021 and 2022; with a total of 213,000 moving out.

In that same period, three Florida counties: Polk, Lee and Pasco had some of the largest net gains, with a combined 85,000 people moving in.

Figures from Cornell University estimated during the first year of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021, 336,000 people moved out of New York City.

The census bureau had previously claimed in 2019 an average of 50,000 people a year move to the city.

Those who are leaving New York for sunnier climbs in Florida appear to be the well-heeled, as tony Palm Beach County saw the highest number of New York license exchanges in the first quarter of the year with 2,012, according to the data, they are followed by Miami-Dade and Broward County with 2,667 license switches.