Looking To Flee NYC For Someplace Sunny? You're Not Alone, Study Shows

NEW YORK CITY — A dreary pandemic in New York City apparently has many dwellers ready to move to places with a bit more sunshine, according to a new study.

Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami and Tampa-St. Petersburg drew the eyes of thousands of city dwellers looking to move during the first three months this year, a Rent.com study showed.

Those sunny cities didn't top soon-to-be-ex New Yorkers' top moving destinations — that honor went to Philadelphia, according to the study — but they came close.

Indeed, New York City and the Empire State as a whole both ranked as places where more people looked to move from, rather than to, the study found.

"States seeing more outbound than inbound migration include big Northeastern locations like New York and Massachusetts," the study states. "Joining these states are Illinois and Colorado, again all locations with major and expensive metros."

New York state as a whole, in fact, had the highest proportion of people looking to leave rather than move into — a potential loss of 114,000 residents, the study found.

The loss of population comes as New York City's rent ranks as the most expensive in the nation. It jumped nearly 40 percent in the past year alone.

Roughly 421,000 New Yorkers made strides to flee the city from January to March, the study found.

They were likely replaced by at least some of about 350,000 people who moved in from other areas, according to the study.

Still, that's an overall loss of roughly 72,000 people, the study found.

The study combed through Rent.com data for where potential renters were interested, deemed as a "lead."

It then calculated a ratio showing whether an area had more inbound or more outbound searches.

And what city and what state had the biggest interest, by this measure?

Biloxi-Gulfport, Mississippi, had the most inbound interest among cities, while Montana topped states, the study found.

Read the full Rent.com study here.