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People who relocated during the 12 months ending 30 June moved a median distance of 50 miles from their previous residence, according to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) survey of 4,850 home buyers.
The distance is the highest on record since NAR began tracking the number in 2005. The new median follows five consecutive years in which the number remained steady at 15 miles.
Forty-eight percent of home purchases during the period were in small towns and rural locales, 32 percent more than a year earlier and a record since at least 2003, NAR noted.
The proportion of suburban homes purchased fell from 51 percent to 39 percent during the period; 10 percent were in urban areas, down from 13 percent.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City were among the metro areas losing the most homeowners, a survey by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation found.
Riverside, Cal., about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, attracted the highest number of migrants of any place in the country, with North Port, Fla., 80 miles south of Tampa, also among migrants’ top choices.
The advent of remote work as the new norm, and the soaring cost of housing in major metro areas, sparked the distant migration, NAR said.
In June 2021, interest rates were near zero and employers were formulating clear policies regarding who needed to be in a central office and when.
With those factors in place, “people had the freedom and the ability to say, ‘I’m going to make this move now’,” NAR research chief Jessica Lautz told The Wall Street Journal.
TREND FORECAST: In the New World Order of remote-work-from-home, the trend to migrate away from big cities will increase. Also pushing the people away from city life are the dire implications of the COVID War. With crime, rents and overall inflation rising—and the night-life that once kept major cities shining having greatly diminished—the trend to escape to exurban areas will escalate.
Again, we had forecast this trend when politicians launched the COVID War nearly three years ago. As Gerald Celente has long noted, “When people lose everything, and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.” And the crime waves prove many have “lost it,” which is why so many city residents want to escape the crime ridden, homeless-on-the street, dead-at-night, empty store neighborhoods of big cities.
Redfin has recently ranked the cities with the highest proportion of searches made by local users looking to escape:
- Detroit: 32 percent
- Denver: 31 percent
- Minneapolis: 29 percent
- New York City: 27 percent
- San Francisco: 24 percent
- Los Angeles: 20 percent
- Boston: 19 percent
- Washington, D.C.: 18 percent
- Seattle: 17 percent
- Chicago: 16 percent