【World Property Journal】Record-setting 27 Percent of U.S. Homebuyers Look to Relocate to Affordable, Less Dense Cities Post COVID-19

Property broker Redfin is reporting this week that a record 27 percent of home searchers looked to move to another U.S. metro area in April and May 2020.

This marks a new high in the share of Redfin.com users searching for homes outside their area, 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 increase in users searching for out-of-town homes may be partly due to the coronavirus pandemic, as more people consider moving to suburbs and smaller towns with less crowding and more room to work from home. Overall, searches for homes in small towns are surging on the Redfin.com website: Pageviews of homes in towns with fewer than 50,000 residents were up 87% year over year in May, more than triple the 22% year-over-year increase in pageviews of homes in cities with more than 1 million residents.
 

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