Urban Migration: Not So Fast

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The narrative of an urban exodus has been a major talking point throughout the pandemic, but new data shows that it might not be the whole story.

People have been moving, or have at least been searching for their next place to live, since the COVID-19 pandemic began. New data from Apartment List shows the transitions have been more of a shuffle rather than a complete exodus from America’s urban cores. Apartment List cites USPS data analyzed by the National Association of Realtors, which states roughly 94,000 more moves happened between March and October 2020 than during the same period in 2019.

As residents left larger cities like New York and San Francisco, rent prices declined, making way for a inbound residents to take fill those vacancies. And, Apartment List data supports the theory that not everyone was looking to leave their urban locations or their hometowns.

“Out-of-town” searches—users in one city but searching for apartment homes in another—made up 62% of Apartment List searches. This is down slightly from pre-pandemic numbers. And, users searching for new cities are actually looking for more density. During the first quarter of 2020, out-of-town searches of cities that are at least 25% more dense than the user’s city reached 41.3%. However, one year later, that has increased to 44%. Meanwhile, less dense cities (at least 25% less dense) went from 32% in the first quarter of 2020 to 30% in 2021.

Residents in principal cities, those with higher density and urban cores, have slowed their searches for new homes in secondary cities from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021. The opposite has happened for residents of secondary cities—their searches for homes in principal cities has increased.

The demand for shorter leasing times also increased. About 9% of all users requested leases of six-months of fewer prior to the pandemic. The requests increased as the pandemic began with a sharp increase for users searching in different metros—jumping from over 10% to more than 15% in a matter of months. This cooled slightly in the fall and winter, but the increases began again in the early part of 2021.

“We also see a big jump in short-term lease demand among those looking to move to lower-density cities,” according to Apartment List’s report. “These trends may signal that the pandemic changed some renters’ location preferences, but only temporarily.” This trend also shows some residents moved to “wait out” the pandemic before moving back once it was safer.