"The corporate headquarters relocation pipeline from California to Texas was a well-worn story during the pandemic’s early days,” reports Propmodo, "however, the complete picture of corporate headquarters relocations is a bit more nuanced."

"CBRE recently analyzed U.S. corporate headquarters relocations by reviewing about 500 publicly announced relocations between 2018 and 2023, ranging from start-up enterprises to Fortune 500 firms. The five-year period was highly active for these moves, with 465 relocations identified since 2018. Relocations peaked at 137 in 2023 and have cooled since then. Texas attracted the most HQ moves between 2018 and 2023 (209), with Austin (66), Dallas (32), and Houston (25) being the big winners. The cities that lost the most headquarters offices were San Francisco/San Jose (79), Los Angeles (50), and New York City (21).”

But traditional locations have not completely lost relevance. 

"While California suffered notable corporate headquarters losses during the pandemic, the artificial intelligence boom has reignited Silicon Valley. San Jose has the fastest home-sales pace among the biggest 50 U.S. metropolitan areas...On the East Coast, New York City lost 21 Fortune 500 corporate headquarters between 2018 and 2023. That’s a significant loss, but NYC also still has an extensive number of major companies located there. More than 250,000 businesses are located in New York City. Forty-three of the companies listed in the S&P 500 Index have headquarters in the Big Apple, the most of any U.S. city.”

The article pointed out that while corporate relocations are a big win for jurisdictions, they may cause pain later on in the form of higher home prices.