The term “snowbird” used to mean one thing: a retiree with a paid-off house up north and a condo in a state like Florida or Arizona, splitting the year roughly six months on and six months off. Real estate agents in several of the country’s biggest seasonal migration markets say that definition is starting to change.
A wave of buyers in their 30s and 40s, armed with high-paying remote jobs and a tax strategy, are adopting the seasonal-migration lifestyle decades before their parents did. Some agents have taken to calling them “zoombirds.”
The pattern shows up differently by market, and most of the information is anecdotal. But what’s clear from the agents Inman spoke with is that seasonal second-home purchases, once the domain of so-called “snowbirds,” now increasingly include younger buyers who aren’t tethered to a location thanks to remote work.
The pattern first came to our attention during an interview with RWorld President Jonathan Dolphus, who also leads the Dolphus Group at eXp Realty in Lake Worth and West Palm Beach, Florida.
“Our snowbirds are getting younger,” Dolphus told Inman at Inman Connect San Diego in July. “It used to be the typical retired snowbird. Now it’s more of a hybrid between the digital nomad and the snowbird. Young executives with the freedom to split time between here and the Northeast, getting the best of both worlds.”
Miami’s slow season isn’t slow anymore
Ivan Chorney and Michael Martirena, who lead the Ivan and Mike Team at Compass in Miami and rank as the market’s top new-construction brokerage team, say the shift has changed their calendar as much as their client list.
“Summer season used to be extremely slow for us, and now we’re busy throughout the entire summer,” Martirena tells Inman. “You walk around Brickell, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, and you see a mix of people we would never have seen 5 years ago.”
Michael Martirena
Martirena traces the acceleration directly to the pandemic, but argues the underlying shift predates it and has outlasted it.
“I think the term ‘snowbird’ itself has evolved. It used to refer to people moving to Florida to retire,” Martirena said. “Now it’s more like people moving to Florida for the season — they’re going back to New York, going back to California — where they’re maintaining their third or fourth home. So the term’s whole concept has really changed.”
Miami, he said, has gone from a city people moved to for quality of life, assuming their careers would eventually pull them to New York or San Francisco, to a city where career opportunities now compete directly with the coasts.
“If you look at University of Miami graduates, the majority probably assumed they’d go to school here and then have to move to New York, Chicago or San Francisco to actually start their careers,” Martirena continued. “Now a good percentage of them stay here. They find opportunities here.”
He said the white-collar opportunities aren’t as deep as New York’s yet, but they’re growing fast.
“So the snowbird used to be someone who came here to retire, and now it’s someone who comes here to work from here — whether that’s a satellite office, a headquarters or working virtually, which is the shift the pandemic created. They can do it now from South Florida,” Martirena said.
Why wait until retirement?
The age compression is showing up outside South Florida and the Sun Belt’s biggest markets, too.
Teresa Minnick
Teresa Minnick, head of sales at The Atlantic Club Residences in Long Branch, New Jersey, said the building’s buyer pool has shifted from a 65-to-80 range 5 to 10 years ago to late-40s through mid-60s today, with an occasional buyer younger than that.
“The pandemic was definitely an accelerator. Buyers are asking themselves, ‘Why wait until I’m 60?'” Minnick tells Inman.
Minnick’s buyers skew toward self-employed professionals and remote or hybrid workers who can treat the Jersey shore town of Long Branch as a primary residence rather than a seasonal one, she said. Others, she said, use a Long Branch residence from spring through summer and spend winter in a warmer climate.
Florida is by far the most common warm-weather location, Minnick said. Her clients frequently mention Palm Beach County, Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Miami and Naples.
Minnick said the younger buyers tend to gravitate toward different unit types than traditional retiree buyers. Younger buyers want larger outdoor space, two full bathrooms and a study/den. She pointed out a study and den as particularly important.
“I see more interest in purchasing the residence unfurnished and then personalizing with or without an interior decorator,” Minnick said.
‘Not necessarily just a vacation home’
Cheryl Benjamin, a broker and founder of the Loving Phoenix Team, said the same dynamic is reshaping expectations in Arizona.
“Younger people no longer have to wait until retirement to live like snowbirds, thanks to remote work,” Benjamin told Inman. “For these buyers, a second home is not necessarily just a vacation home. It may also be a place where they live and work for part of the year.”
Cheryl Benjamin
Benjamin said that younger snowbirds often have different needs from traditional retirees. For these buyers, an easy-to-maintain home matters, but so do a home office, reliable internet and enough space to live comfortably for several months. She said these buyers often like the convenience of a home that is already furnished and move-in ready.
“Amenities may also matter, but beyond a swimming pool and a golf course, they may want fitness facilities, restaurants, walkable areas or places to meet other people,” Benjamin said. “Although I haven’t seen enough evidence to say Phoenix developers are creating specific communities for younger snowbirds, many features appeal to both remote workers and younger seasonal buyers.”
Benjamin said flexibility is the biggest change. The traditional snowbird may have planned around retirement. Working remotely offers greater flexibility for younger buyers, which shapes their desired lifestyle and needs for their new home.
“Some may stay here throughout the winter, while others come and go several times throughout the year,” Benjamin said. “I believe that has broadened the snowbird market.”
Benjamin is cautious about putting an exact figure on how much younger the snowbird population has become, though.
“I haven’t come across recent MLS data showing the age of seasonal buyers,” she said. “Census data can show broader housing and migration trends, but it does not tell us much about younger snowbird buyers specifically. The biggest difference I see is in how buyers use these homes and the fact that you no longer have to be retired to live seasonally.”
Escaping state income taxes
While Atlanta isn’t a traditional snowbird destination, it’s become a feeder market for this demographic shift, according to Wayne Legg, a Coldwell Banker Realty agent in North Metro Atlanta.
Wayne Legg
Over the past two years, Legg has worked with buyers in their late 30s and 40s — remote workers and high earners from New York and California — who are establishing Georgia residency specifically to escape state income tax.
“Georgia has no inheritance tax, a relatively low flat income tax, and a cost of living that makes the 183-day rule genuinely attractive compared to staying in New York or California full-time,” Legg told Inman. “These aren’t retirees. They’re 42-year-old tech workers and business owners who can work from anywhere and have done the math.”
The 183-day rule is the general standard states use to determine tax residency. If someone spends 183 days or more in a state, that state can treat them as a resident and tax their full income.
The count is often stricter than people expect, since many states count any part of a day present, like a layover or short visit, as a full day. Some states also weigh “domicile” factors like driver’s license, voting registration, and family ties.
Because of this, snowbirds and other multi-state residents need to carefully track and document their travel to avoid unexpectedly triggering residency in a high-tax state.
Legg also said this younger demographic differs from traditional snowbirds.
“They want single-family homes with home office infrastructure, not condos,” he said. “They’re buying in school districts — even without kids yet — because they’re thinking about eventual full relocation, not just seasonal use.”
Legg said they also ask about HOA amenities differently. The younger demographic wants hiking trails, fitness facilities and fast internet, not golf courses. Legg said they also close on home purchases faster, with less contingency drama than traditional buyers, because they’ve already decided to move — they’re just picking the market.
“The 183-day rule conversation comes up directly,” Legg said. “Several clients have told me explicitly that their attorney advised them on the day count before they ever called me.”
Even wealthy clients need help tracking residency days
Other agents who work with snowbird clients, either young or old, emphasize the importance of knowing the 183-day rule and what it means for a client’s taxes.
“People think it’s literally six months and a day, but they don’t calculate time spent traveling outside the state,” Martirena of the Ivan and Mike Team in Miami said. “I’ve had clients who have to track everything.”
Martirena added that buyers at this level of wealth and sophistication usually already know this, because they’re savvy and have accountants and attorneys who handle it.
“The slip-up risk is really about making sure a newer agent is attuned to it, because clients want to make sure they’re paying taxes in the right state depending on where they’re coming from,” he said. “Not every client is a multi-millionaire dealing with a big team. Some are simply millionaires who aren’t fully educated on this. So the advice is to be sensitive to it and help educate your clients.”
Ivan Chorney
Ivan Chorney, Martirena’s partner on the Ivan and Mike Compass team, said they’ve found particular success with snowbird and out-of-state clients because they are both from the North. Chorney grew up in Long Island, New York, and Connecticut, and he lived in Southern California for 5 years.
“So we understand the places our clients come from and have lived, and we’re well-traveled ourselves,” Chorney said. “We’ve been to a lot of the places they’ve traveled to, stayed in a lot of the hotels they’ve stayed in. We make it a point to spend more than we probably should to stay in those places so we have that familiarity and can talk about it easily.”
Chorney said that puts them on a similar playing field as their clients, or even lets them feel a bit of “superiority” over them, which works in their favor.
“It’s really about getting familiar with your clients’ lives, where they come from, what they do, the events they like to travel to — Art Basel, things like that,” Chorney said.
