HOUSTON – (By Dale King, Realty News Report) — The coronavirus pandemic is reshaping homebuyer priorities and accelerating migration away from dense urban centers across the United States. Many buyers are reassessing where they want to live, favoring locations that offer more space, better affordability and room for home offices as they respond to health concerns and social unrest in some major metros.
Increasingly, residents are leaving large coastal cities hit hard by the pandemic and related disruption — including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Seattle — in pursuit of safer, more affordable and more livable communities.
Redfin, the Seattle-based residential real estate company, reports that homeseekers are prioritizing outdoor space, dedicated work-from-home areas and lifestyle changes that suburban and inland markets more readily provide.
A record 27.4% of Redfin.com users considered moving to a different metro area in the second quarter of 2020, the company found. That compares with 25.2% in the second quarter of 2019 and 26.0% in the first quarter of 2020, indicating a notable uptick in interest in relocation.
Redfin’s data show that the most-searched destinations tend to be inland metros with lower housing costs. In the second quarter of 2020, Phoenix, Sacramento, Las Vegas, Austin and Atlanta attracted the largest net inflows of Redfin.com users. Dallas also ranked among the top ten cities seeing an influx of search activity.
Home searchers are motivated by a range of factors, from avoiding COVID-19 exposure to seeking more favorable climates and lower living costs, the report notes.
“The factors driving a surge in overall homebuyer demand—low mortgage rates and changes in what people are looking for in a home—are lighting a fire in people who were already considering a move to a different area,” said Redfin economist Taylor Marr.
He added that employers’ growing acceptance of remote work, coupled with limited access to amenities in many large coastal cities, is accelerating moves by people who want more affordable living or to be closer to family. “As we enter the second half of the year, I expect more people to move from one part of the country to another as the pandemic continues to influence people’s priorities and lifestyles,” Marr said, while noting that some pandemic-driven relocations may be temporary rather than permanent.
Redfin’s migration analysis ranks both metros gaining the most search interest from incoming residents and metros experiencing the largest outflows. New York City topped the list for departures, with 33,963 residents searching to move away in Q2 2020. San Francisco followed with 31,788, Los Angeles with just over 17,000, Washington, D.C. with about 10,550, and Chicago with 6,697.
Redfin agents observe that expensive coastal cities typically see the highest rates of out-migration as buyers seek more affordable housing options elsewhere.
Phoenix recorded a net inflow of 9,428 Redfin.com users in Q2 2020, roughly 1,200 more than in the same quarter of 2019. Most new Phoenix searchers were previously located in Los Angeles, the report says.
“There’s an influx of people moving into Phoenix,” said local Redfin agent Thomas Wiederstein. “They’re coming from areas like California, Texas, Washington, Chicago and plenty from the East Coast. The cost of living here is a huge driver, but weather also plays a big role with many looking to avoid those cold winters.”
Austin ranked fourth for net inflow, with 6,770 new searchers in Q2 2020 compared with 5,403 in Q2 2019. “We’re seeing tons of interest from clients moving to Austin from major cities on both coasts, particularly tech workers,” said Andrew Vallejo, a Redfin agent in Austin. “Buyers who discovered they don’t like being quarantined in an apartment in San Francisco or New York and can work remotely are looking for a house, and they can afford that here in Austin. I have a client who closed on a home sight-unseen from the Bay Area, and another from Portland who is in the process of buying.”
Dallas also saw a notable increase in interest, ranking sixth among metros receiving newcomers with 5,605 people searching in Q2 2020—about 1,500 more than in Q2 2019.
The migration findings are based on a sample of more than one million Redfin.com users who searched for homes across 87 metropolitan areas in the second quarter of 2020, with searches unlikely to lead to relocation or purchase excluded from the analysis.
July 30, 2020 Realty News Report Copyright 2020
Photo Credit: Ralph Bivins, Realty News Report Copyright 2020
File: Urban Migration File (2) Urban Migration in the Pandemic
