When people move out of El Paso, the most popular destinations are other Southwest metropolitan areas. And when people relocate to El Paso, they’re generally coming from those same areas.

CBRE, one of the nation’s largest commercial real estate companies, analyzed the past two years of change of address forms filed with the U.S. Postal Service to identify migration patterns. These numbers represent households, not necessarily people. A household filing a change of address could have multiple residents.

Here are the most common metro areas for movement to and from El Paso.

Ten of the 11 metro areas that drew the largest numbers of El Pasoans moving out over the two years were in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. Seattle, at No. 10, was the only destination more than 800 miles from El Paso.

Fort Bliss is a huge influence on migration. Four of the metro areas with the largest movement to and from El Paso were home to large Army posts — San Antonio (Fort Sam Houston), Killeen, Texas (Fort Hood), Colorado Springs (Fort Carson) and Seattle (Fort Lewis).

The story is similar for households that moved to El Paso from another city over the past two years.

El Paso is a net loser in the movement of people with most of the cities on this list. The largest net loss is with the Phoenix area, at -706. The largest net gain is from San Diego, at +150.

Cover photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker