Remote workers are gaining the ability to buy homes and cut living costs after small US towns began offering cash relocation incentives of $5,000. The payments, paired with cheaper taxes and lower housing costs, are allowing some people to keep the same salary while improving their household finances.
Brianna Beyrouti left Portland, Oregon, last year and moved roughly 2,000 miles east with her two children to Muncie, Indiana, a city of about 65,000 people. She kept her job with the same bank and the same annual pay of $107,000 (£79,000), but says the move has been transformative for her household budget. In Portland she paid $1,290 a month in rent. In Muncie her combined mortgage, home insurance and property tax for a detached house come to $1,100 a month. With lower state income tax, cheaper car insurance and smaller energy bills, she estimates she is $600 a month better off and has been able to buy a home for the first time.
Those gains are not unique to Muncie. The local council advertises a $5,000 relocation payment through a website called MakeMyMove, which lists similar programs across the US and charges participating locations a subscription fee. Muncie says around 100 families have moved there through the MakeMyMove programme. MakeMyMove says it helped 1,000 people relocate last year and is on target to increase that to 1,500 in 2026.
Another example comes from scientist Elena Chrysostomou, who relocated from San Diego to Jacksonville, Illinois, a town of 17,700 people, with backing from the Jacksonville Regional Economic Development Corporation. The JREDC provided $5,000 in cash plus a "quality of life package" worth $4,000 that includes free gym memberships and golf passes. Elena had been paying $3,000 a month to rent a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego; she now owns a three-bedroom home with a mortgage of $1,868. After changing jobs her salary rose by 22% and her commute dropped from about 15 minutes to one minute.
Local officials present these offers as a tool to attract residents after decades of decline: Muncie’s population reached 65,466 last year, up from 65,194 in 2020 but still below its 1990 peak of 71,828. Nationally, a 2025 report from the National Association of Realtors found affordability was the primary reason people moving to another state chose to relocate, a trend strengthened by wider acceptance of remote work since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Recipients say the trade-offs are real: fewer restaurants and activities, leaving family and friends, longer drives and the challenge of settling children into new schools. Still, those who move via the schemes report larger savings and improved quality of life. Municipalities running the programmes are betting those individual gains will translate into modest population increases as they scale subscription-based recruitment through platforms such as MakeMyMove.
