Record 27% of Homebuyers Are Looking to Relocate To Affordable, Less Dense Areas

A record 27.0% of home searchers looked to move to another metro area in April and May 2020, a new high in the share of Redfin.com users searching for homes outside their area. It’s up from 25.2% in the second quarter of 2019 and 26.0% in the first quarter of this year.

The latest migration analysis is based on a sample of more than 1 million Redfin.com users who searched for homes across 87 metro areas in April and May, excluding searches unlikely to precede an actual relocation or home purchase. To be included in this dataset, a Redfin.com user must have viewed at least 10 homes in a particular metro area, and homes in that area must make up at least 80% of the user’s searches.

The places home searchers are looking to leave and those they’re looking to move into remain largely the same as before the pandemic took hold: Redfin.com users want to leave expensive coastal metros for affordable inland areas.

New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles had the biggest net outflow of Redfin.com users in April and May. A net outflow means more people are looking to leave than move in, while a net inflow means more people are looking to move in than leave.

San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, Denver and Boston have all seen small (less than 2 percentage points) increases in the share of people looking to move away since last year.

Ideal Title Agency continues to offer advice and broad context for real estate agents, buyers and sellers. Contact us at info@idealtitleagency.com or check us out on Facebook: facebook.com/idealtitle .

Source: https://www.redfin.com/blog/april-may-2020-housing-migration-report/  Redfin Blog (2020)