It really isn’t a secret. Houston is growing, and growing fast.

The metro area population grew 2.5 percent from 2013 to 2014, according to the latest census figures. That means the population grew by 156,371 people, reaching a total population of 6.49 million.

While some of the growth can be attributed to birth rates and immigration, the big chunk of new residents are movers from within Texas and across the U.S.

So where are all those people coming from?

Another census study, conducted over five years from 2009-2013, gives us a pretty good idea of all the different places new Houstonians are coming from.

Harris County, which contains the city proper, attracted 161,094 domestic movers during the five-year span of time. Just over half, 53.4 percent, came from counties within Texas, while the other 46.6 percent came from other states.

Below are rankings for the top five counties of origin for movers to Harris County:

Movers outside of Texas:

Los Angeles County, CA Cook County, IL (Chicago) Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix) San Diego County, CA Miami-Dade County, FL

Movers from Texas:

Fort Bend County Montgomery County Galveston County Brazos County Travis County

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Via via SpareFoot’s Houston Moving Guide



All that movement generates demand for local self-storage facilities.

In 2015, relocation (moving) was the number one reason Houston consumers gave for needing storage, with 48% of SpareFoot survey respondents in the market using storage for that reason. The next closest reason for renting a storage unit in Houston was decluttering, at 19%.

This is in line with the national average–about half of the people that book storage on SpareFoot are doing so because of a move.