Retirees are selling the houses they spent decades in and moving hundreds of miles away for one reason: to watch their grandkids grow up in person. A new 2026 Baby Chaser Index from NewHomeSource and Zonda finds that one in four Baby Boomers now plan to retire specifically to be near their adult children and grandchildren, and Raleigh, North Carolina, just took the No. 1 spot as the metro absorbing the most of them.
The data behind the “baby chaser” boom
The term isn’t new to real estate circles, but the scale is becoming harder to ignore. Zonda’s index tracks U.S. metro areas with populations above 750,000, comparing household growth among two age groups: adults 25 to 44 (the generation having kids) and adults 60 to 79 (the generation retiring). Metros where both cohorts are growing together, both this year and cumulatively since 2010, rise to the top of the list, according to the company’s own release.
Raleigh jumped from third place to first this year after adding 24,000 households in 2025 alone, per the index. It knocked Austin, the index’s five-year leader, out of the top spot entirely.
Key Points — the 2026 Baby Chaser Index top 10 metros:
- Raleigh, NC
- Nashville, TN
- Houston, TX
- Dallas, TX
- Charlotte, NC
- Boise City, ID
- Charleston, SC
- Austin, TX
- San Antonio, TX
- Atlanta, GA
“Family connections are a powerful driver of where people decide to live, especially for older Americans with more freedom and flexibility to choose their new location,” said Ali Wolf, chief economist at NewHomeSource and Zonda, in the company’s announcement. Shaun McCutcheon, vice president at Zonda Advisory, put it more bluntly in the same release: “The number one reason retirees choose to relocate is to be close to family.”
Federal data backs up the shape of the migration, if not the motive behind every move. The U.S. Census Bureau’s vintage 2025 population estimates, released in May, show Raleigh crossed the 500,000-resident mark between 2024 and 2025, becoming the 39th U.S. city to hit that threshold. Charlotte added 20,731 residents in the same span, the largest single-city numeric gain in the country, while Nashville gained 9,244 residents, good for eighth nationally. The bureau’s own researchers described these mid-sized Sun Belt metros as landing in a population “Goldilocks zone,” growing fast enough to avoid the stagnation hitting small towns without the housing strain slowing down the biggest cities.
Why grandparents are picking these particular cities
The moves tend to lag, not lead. Grandparents typically relocate six to 18 months after their adult children have already settled somewhere new, according to Zonda’s research cited by RISMedia. That delay lines up with what the index measures: it’s tracking where the 25-to-44 cohort already put down roots, then watching the 60-to-79 cohort follow. Roughly 11,000 Baby Boomers turn 65 every day in the U.S., and while about 80% say they’re content enough to stay put in their current home, the remainder is large enough to reshape entire metro housing markets.
Florida, long the default retirement landing spot, fell out of the index’s upper tier this year. Rising property taxes and homeowners insurance premiums have made the math harder to justify, even with grandkids nearby, per the same reporting. That helps explain why inland Sun Belt metros with lower carrying costs are pulling ahead of the coastal retirement standbys.
Market conditions in these metros are also giving arriving grandparents room to negotiate. In the week ending September 4, Raleigh-Cary listings carried a median price of $484,069 with roughly 5,100 homes on the market, and 48% of active listings had a price cut, according to data reported by HousingWire. Charlotte’s median list price sat at $479,000, with 54% of listings marked down and homes sitting a median of 63 days. Houston had the largest inventory of any market on the list, at nearly 36,700 properties. San Antonio was the most affordable of the top 10 at a $334,599 median, while Boise was the priciest at $594,990.
None of that is an accident of timing. A softer, buyer-favorable market in exactly the metros where adult children have already moved gives retirees more room to sell a longtime family home, buy in unfamiliar territory, and still come out ahead financially. For a generation that spent one house raising kids, the incentive to spend a second one watching those kids raise their own has never been more aligned with what the market will actually let them do.
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