When a city like Tulsa, Oklahoma, can recruit nearly 700 households a year with $10,000 relocation checks—and keep 90% of them after the first year—it starts to look less like a post-pandemic gimmick, and more like a new model of economic development.
That’s the bet companies like MakeMyMove are making, as small towns and rural communities across the country compete to lure high-income remote workers who feel priced out of their home states.
MakeMyMove is a platform that facilitates relocation-incentive programs, offering high earners perks like $10,000 cash, access to co-working spaces, vouchers for fitness classes and others in exchange for them moving into the community.
“Cash is the hook,” Evan Hock, COO at MakeMyMove, told Fortune. “But no one’s getting rich off of a $5,000 cash incentive. And so that’s not why they’re moving. The programs that are most successful at retaining people are the ones that really invest in getting those people woven into the local community.”
Bringing California salaries to Midwestern cost of living
Since launching the platform in 2021, 4,000 people have moved utilizing MakeMyMove, Hock said. The majority—about 10%—are moving from California, while others are moving away from Texas, Florida, and Illinois, he said.
“A lot of people feel priced out” of their home states, Hock said.
“They can’t buy a home, they can’t start a family there. And in many cases, they’re able to keep their California salary and just operate on a Midwest cost of living,” he added.
Most of these people have incomes double than that of the median of the local community they move to, meaning there is immense return-on-investment for these communities.
MakeMyMove’s internal modeling, which they said they built with the Indiana Public Policy institute, estimated that in Noblesville, Indiana, a $15,000 incentive package helped attract 102 households with an average income of $138,000 and produced an annual economic impact of more than $10.6 million.
In southwest Indiana, five rural counties spent $5,500 per household to recruit 93 families earning $97,000 on average, generating $5.4 million a year.
The company measures success in long-term outcomes: retention rates, tax revenue, and economic spillover.
“About 90% stay after their first year,” he said. “We find that about 70% are still there after year three. For about every $100,000 of new income that we recruit, it generates about $83,000 of new economic output each year.”
That output includes everything from payroll taxes to the consumer spending that “trickles through the economy.” Roughly a quarter of new households bring a spouse who ends up taking a local job, he added.
Hock said the return is far stronger than what towns typically see from the traditional method of economic development, luring entire companies with tax breaks.
“The historical cost per job of a community giving an incentive to a company to relocate is usually about $15,000 to $20,000 per job,” he noted. “We come in well below that in terms of the total cost to recruit these individual households.”
Tulsa and Indianapolis are the banner programs, drawing hundreds of households a year, but smaller places are also seeing results. Rural towns, college communities and even cities that have struggled with population loss have used MakeMyMove to tip the scale.
“Every community type that we’ve promoted on the platform has found a target audience,” Hock said. “This is just a tool for them to go on the offensive and start to recruit talent and population.”
Many of those movers are taking a leap into the unknown: Hock estimates that about half of the people who relocate through the site have never visited the town before deciding to move. The draw, he noted, is less about politics or a one-time bonus and more about the quality of life they think they can build: a stronger sense of community, affordable housing, and the space to raise a family.
Still, the cash incentive serves as a good “marketing ploy” and helps get their attention. Programs generally range from $5,000 to $10,000, though some cities have gone bigger. West Virginia’s Ascend program offered $20,000 in cash and outdoor perks like free park passes, while Rochester, New York, launched a $19,000 package that filled quickly.
“There is some price elasticity,” Hock said, but added that plenty of places succeed with more modest bonuses.
He said what ultimately keeps people in town isn’t the check, but rather how well they’re woven into the fabric of the community. Tulsa hosts monthly events and professional-networking meetups. In Indiana, new residents are invited to “coffee with the mayor,” or group hikes through Hoosier National Forest.
“Each of these communities are finding their own way to plug people in,” Hock said. “That’s what makes people stay in the five-to-10-year time frame.”
The long game
MakeMyMove doesn’t see itself to be a product of a short-term, post-pandemic boom. It has expanded rapidly, hosting more than 200 cities and towns on the site with Michigan and Wisconsin growing to become state-wind initiatives.
“Growth begets growth,” Hock said. “If you’re losing population, you’ll have less money to invest, which means more people leave.”
The company frames its program as a complement to deeper investments in housing and quality of life, and a beginning of a new method towards development.
“It’s the new phase. There are still tens of millions of remote workers just in the U.S. alone. We’re seeing strong growth in communities adopting this as a new economic development methodology.”