An estimated 2.2 million people left the United States in 2025, of whom 180,000 were American citizens. The figures were drawn from Pew Research Center data and cited in a new briefing from Global Citizen Solutions’ Global Intelligence Unit.
The numbers carry inherent uncertainty. The U.S. discontinued its program that tracked permanent departures in 1957 and no longer requires citizens to register a place of residence abroad, making precise emigration counts impossible.
What is not in dispute is the direction of the trend. The briefing tracks citizenship renunciations, overseas residency registrations and longitudinal survey data to document what researchers describe as the largest American emigration shift in decades.
For real estate professionals, especially those working with international buyers, luxury clients or globally mobile households, the findings are worth understanding.
Renunciations are surging, and just got cheaper
Gallup’s long-term tracking data tells a striking story.
During the Bush and Obama administrations, roughly 10 percent to 11 percent of Americans expressed a desire to emigrate. That share rose to 16 percent during the first Trump presidency, climbed further in subsequent years, and by November 2025 stood at one in five Americans overall.
Among women aged 15 to 44, the figure reached 40 percent, up from just 10 percent in 2014 and four times higher than in any other age and gender group at that time.
The behavioral data points in the same direction. Before 2009, fewer than 400 Americans renounced their citizenship annually. By 2024, that number had climbed to 4,820, a 48 percent increase from the prior year and the third-highest annual total ever recorded.
In the first quarter of 2025, 1,285 Americans formally expatriated, a 102 percent jump compared to the same quarter the prior year. The global queue for renunciation appointments now exceeds 30,000 people.
The cost of renouncing has also just gone down. On April 13, the State Department reduced its renunciation fee from $2,350 to $450, restoring the rate that had been in place from 2010 to 2014, following sustained legal pressure. Analysts widely expect that change to accelerate the trend.
Europe is the top destination
Europe has absorbed the largest share of American relocators, with more than 1.5 million U.S. nationals estimated to be living across the continent, according to Global Citizen Solutions.
The top EU and EFTA destinations for Americans holding valid residence permits as of December 2023 were Germany (81,509), Spain (44,804), France (38,181), Italy (36,549), the Netherlands (33,107), Switzerland (19,579) and Portugal (13,948). The vast majority hold permits of one year or more, indicating permanent or semi-permanent relocation rather than extended tourism.
Portugal ranks first in Global Citizen Solutions’ Global Retirement Report, and Spain leads its Global Digital Nomad Index for U.S. citizens. Greece, Italy and Malta are also drawing significant numbers across income and lifestyle profiles.
One significant pathway has recently been narrowed. Italy’s ancestry citizenship route, historically one of the most popular for Americans, was restricted by Law 74/2025 to children and grandchildren of Italian citizens only.
Italy’s Constitutional Court upheld that restriction in a ruling announced March 12, confirming that the estimated 60 million to 80 million people worldwide who had previously been eligible through earlier generations no longer qualify under the automatic framework. The change has prompted a rush of last-minute applications and accelerated interest in alternative routes.
What’s driving the surge, and who’s actually leaving
The Global Intelligence Unit is careful to push back on the “fleeing crisis” framing. The Americans acting on emigration interest tend to be informed, financially stable, and make a deliberate quality-of-life calculation rather than an emergency exit.
The structural pressures they cite include: the U.S. Supplemental Poverty Measure reaching 12.9 percent in 2023 (its second consecutive annual increase), persistent inflation in housing and healthcare, political polarization, climate-related costs ($92.9 billion in weather and climate disaster damages in 2023 alone), and gun violence rates that remain far above peer nations.
“The United States remains a high-income country by every traditional measure,” said Laura Madrid, lead researcher at the Global Intelligence Unit. “But the structural pressures bearing down on ordinary Americans — rising poverty, persistent inflation in housing and healthcare, deepening political polarization, and a public safety crisis unlike anything seen in peer nations — are registering in people’s decisions about where to build their lives.”
The pool of eligible movers is larger than most realize
An estimated 7 million to 10 million Americans already hold dual citizenship, according to Global Citizen Solutions, though the U.S. government does not track the figure, and independent estimates vary widely.
Up to 30 million people may qualify for ancestry-based European passports through Italy, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Hungary and other countries. These options have existed for years, but many Americans are only now actively pursuing them.
Caribbean citizenship-by-investment programs continue to attract those seeking faster routes to a second passport and greater global mobility. Following a regional agreement among the five participating nations, minimum investments now start at $200,000, up from $100,000 before mid-2024.
The U.S. passport has also lost ground. Global Citizen Solutions’ Global Passport Index, which tracks travel freedom and lifestyle value across 199 countries, shows the U.S. falling from 1st place in 2021 to 14th in 2025.
What this means for real estate professionals
The emigration trend may seem distant from day-to-day domestic real estate transactions, but its downstream effects are real.Â
Households seriously exploring a move abroad often liquidate U.S. real estate holdings, freeing up capital but also exiting the buyer pool for good. Internationally mobile clients have increasingly specific needs, such as understanding foreign property ownership rules, tax treaty implications and timing a U.S. home sale to align with visa or residency milestones.
Agents with international referral networks, fluency in global mobility considerations, or relationships with immigration attorneys and wealth managers are better positioned to serve this client segment and to retain relationships with clients whose lives may span multiple countries.
The Americans leaving are not a monolithic group. Some are retirees drawn by the lower costs of living and universal healthcare in Southern Europe. Others are remote workers unbundled from geography by the pandemic-era shift to distributed work.Â
Still others are high-net-worth individuals pursuing formal second citizenship as a financial and personal planning tool. Each profile has distinct real estate needs and distinct opportunities for agents positioned to meet them.