Growth cools in Sun Belt metros

USA Today reports:

Torrid population growth rates in Sun Belt metropolitan areas from Florida to Arizona, Nevada and California have slowed amid a severe downturn in the nation's housing market, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census Bureau data released today.

"It's really a slowdown in places with superheated housing markets that were almost out of control in terms of their growth," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution. "It reflects the rapid response to angst of getting financing in those areas. People are becoming much more risk-averse, much more conservative about moving."

The new data, covering July 1, 2006, to July 1, 2007, show that domestic migration in the USA has slowed. Even among the 10 fastest-growing large counties, nine registered slower growth than the previous year.

The slowdown was significant in some instances: Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix, added 101,583 people from 2006 to 2007 — more than any other county but down from the 132,029 it added the previous year. Counties including Miami, Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas and Riverside, Calif., had similar growth downturns.

Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, says the new data reflect only "the front edge" of the housing crisis. "Next year at this time, I think you're going to see even more of a slowdown in domestic migration," he says.