If you've felt like every third new face in the foothills has a California accent lately, the numbers back you up. According to the latest IRS migration data, California sent Colorado more new residents than any other state in the country — a net gain of over 7,400 people in a single year, more than double Colorado's next-largest source state. This isn't a rumor or a real estate agent's talking point. It's tax return data: people who filed in California one year and filed from a Colorado address the next.

We get asked constantly by both sides of this move — Californians wondering if Colorado is really what it's cracked up to be, and longtime Coloradans wondering why their new neighbors keep mentioning Los Angeles. So we pulled the actual data, cross-checked it against a couple of other sources, and put together an honest picture of who's coming, where they're landing, and what to actually expect.

Where in California They're Actually Leaving

The IRS breaks migration down to the county level, and the pattern is pretty clear. Los Angeles County is Colorado's single largest source of new residents from California, followed by San Diego County, Orange County, and — increasingly — Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley. Riverside and San Bernardino Counties (the Inland Empire) round out the list. A separate report from moveBuddha, which tracks real-time moving-cost searches rather than tax filings, shows the same story from the other direction: Bakersfield, Long Beach, Riverside, Fresno, San Diego, and Santa Clara are among the most-searched cities to leave in the entire country. Two different data sources, collected two different ways, pointing at the same handful of California counties.

That matters if you're one of the people making this move, because it means you're not doing anything unusual. There's a well-worn path here, and a lot of it runs straight through Jefferson County.

What's Actually Driving the Move

Ask ten people why they left California and you'll get ten answers, but a few come up over and over in the conversations we have with relocating buyers:

Housing dollars stretch further here. A comparable home in the Denver foothills often costs meaningfully less than the same square footage in Los Angeles or the Bay Area, and property taxes in Colorado run well below California's already-capped rates in most cases once you account for total housing cost.

Remote and hybrid work untethered a lot of Californians from needing to live near a specific office, and Colorado offers mountain access without the commute times or wildfire insurance headaches that have become routine in parts of California.

And frankly, a lot of people are just tired of the traffic. Coming from LA or the Bay Area, a twenty-minute drive to a trailhead sounds like fiction until you're doing it yourself.

The Cost-of-Living Reality Check

We'll be straight with you: Colorado is not cheap, and anyone telling you it is hasn't looked at Evergreen or Golden home prices lately. What's true is that it's cheaper than the parts of California most of our relocating buyers are coming from, especially once you factor in the full cost of homeownership — insurance, property tax, and daily expenses — not just the sticker price on a listing.

Colorado does have a state income tax, which surprises some Texas-bound comparisons but rarely surprises Californians, since California's rate is considerably higher. Where people usually notice the biggest swing is homeowners and auto insurance, which in much of California has climbed sharply due to wildfire risk. Colorado has its own wildfire-prone areas — a real conversation we have with every buyer looking at mountain property — but the insurance market here is generally less disrupted than California's right now.

Where They're Landing in the Foothills

We see California transplants across the whole west metro, but a few patterns hold. Buyers coming from denser parts of LA and the Bay Area — used to smaller lots and shorter commutes — often gravitate first to Golden, Arvada, or Littleton, where they can get walkable downtown areas, good schools, and quick access to both Denver and the mountains without fully committing to mountain living on day one.

Buyers who are specifically chasing the mountain lifestyle — often people leaving Orange County, San Diego, or the Inland Empire's more spread-out suburbs — tend to look harder at Evergreen, Conifer, and Morrison, where acreage and privacy are actually available at prices that would be unthinkable in coastal California. Pine and Bailey, further up the canyon, attract buyers who want real distance from the city and don't mind a longer drive for groceries.

A Few Things That Catch California Buyers Off Guard

Altitude is real. Evergreen and Conifer sit well above 7,000 feet, and even fit, active people notice it for the first few weeks — plan your moving week accordingly.

Well and septic systems are common outside city limits, which is a different maintenance mindset than municipal water and sewer.

Winters here are genuinely different from anything most of coastal California has seen. Snow tires and a plan for your driveway aren't optional extras.

And if you're used to California's stricter disclosure and inspection norms, you'll find Colorado's process comparable, but the specific forms and timelines differ enough that having a Colorado-based agent walk you through it matters.

If You're Still in California and Weighing This Move

You don't have to figure this out alone, and you don't have to fly out for a dozen showings before you have a real sense of the market. We work with relocating buyers regularly — video walkthroughs, honest conversations about which communities actually fit what you're looking for, and straight answers about what your California home's equity actually buys here. And if it turns out your move is going somewhere other than Colorado, our eXp network gives us access to more than 85,000 agents nationwide, so we can point you to someone we trust wherever you're headed.

Sources: IRS Statistics of Income, State-to-State and County-to-County Migration Data, 2022–2023; moveBuddha 2025–2026 Migration Report.

Thinking about making the move from California? Reach out to Tim and Sandy Jones at Tim@JonesTeamColorado.com, call or text (720) 314-8462, or schedule a free 15-minute call to talk through your specific situation.