Bend, Boise and Charleston Are Attracting Twice as Many Out-of-Town Homebuyers as Last Year Amid Pandemic-Fueled Migration

SEATTLE, Feb. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- (NASDAQ: RDFN) — Nationwide, 30.7% of Redfin.com users looked to move to a different metro in January, according to a new report from Redfin (www.redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage. That's up from 25.9% during the same time period last year and the highest share since Redfin started tracking migration in 2017. The increase is driven by buyers leaving pricey coastal areas like the Bay Area and Los Angeles in favor of relatively affordable places like Boise, ID and Bend, OR.  

The latest migration analysis is based on a sample of more than 2 million Redfin.com users who searched for homes across 87 metro areas in January, 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 number of homebuyers looking to move to Bend, Boise and Charleston has more than doubled over the last year 

Bend had a net inflow of roughly 1,600 Redfin.com users in January, up from 750 in January 2020, before the onset of the pandemic. A net inflow is a measure of how many more Redfin.com home searchers looked to move into a metro than leave out of a sample of 2 million Redfin users. 

Bend is one of 17 metros where net inflow has more than doubled over the last year. Another example is Boise, which had a net inflow of roughly 1,100 Redfin.com users in January, up from 500 the year before. And Charleston had a net inflow of about 1,000, up from 300. Compared to major cities like New York and Los Angeles, those are all relatively affordable areas that offer a slower pace of life and plenty of natural beauty.

"Boise has been hot with out-of-towners for the last several years, but the pandemic has pushed people who were on the brink to move here as quickly as possible," said local Redfin agent Kristin Lopez. "Almost all my buyers are people from California, Washington, Oregon, Texas and Arizona who can work remotely and have kids in online school. There's an interesting dynamic right now because Boise is still less expensive than places like Seattle or Los Angeles, but migration has caused prices to skyrocket and supply to shrink. Some buyers have been searching for six months and now suddenly they're priced out." 

"It makes it hard for locals to buy a home," Lopez continued. "Local wages haven't caught up with the appreciation of home prices. And as long as interest rates stay low, I don't foresee the market slowing down anytime in at least the next year." 

Portland, OR, Seattle and the Bay Area were the top origins for homebuyers moving into Bend from out of town, and Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Seattle were the top origins for those moving to Boise. New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago were the top origins for people relocating to Charleston. Although Bend, Boise and Charleston aren't necessarily inexpensive—the median home-sale price in January was $509,000 in Bend, $420,000 in Boise and $330,000 in Charleston—they are more affordable than the places people are moving from. For instance, the typical home sold for $1.34 million in the San Francisco metro in January, and $725,000 in Los Angeles. 

Austin, Phoenix and Las Vegas are attracting more out-of-town homebuyers than any other metro

Austin had a bigger net inflow of residents than any other major metro in January. It's followed by Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas and Atlanta. Relatively affordable inland areas like those five are typically the most popular destinations for people relocating. 

The share of home searches from out-of-towners as opposed to locals also increased from last January in nine of the 10 most popular destinations (Atlanta is the exception). Nearly 45% of searches for homes in Austin were from out of town, up from 32.6% a year earlier. 

San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles are losing more residents than any other metro

San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Seattle topped the list of metros with the biggest net outflow in January. A net outflow means more people are looking to leave than move in. 

Net outflow increased from last year in all 10 of the top places people are leaving. Plus, the share of locals searching for homes in other metros as opposed to their home metro increased from last January in nine of the 10 metros people are leaving. The portion of Redfin.com users in New York looking to move away has declined slightly since last year, but that's likely because a lot of New Yorkers searching for homes elsewhere have already left the metro, so their search origins reflect their current location.

To read the full report, please visit: https://www.redfin.com/news/january-2021-housing-migration-trends 

About Redfin 
Redfin (www.redfin.com) is a technology-powered residential real estate company, redefining real estate in the consumer's favor in a commission-driven industry. We do this by integrating every step of the home buying and selling process and pairing our own agents with our own technology, creating a service that is faster, better and costs less. We offer brokerage, iBuying, mortgage, and title services, and we also run the country's #1 nationwide brokerage website, offering a host of online tools to consumers, including the Redfin Estimate. We represent people buying and selling homes in over 95 markets in the United States and Canada. Since our launch in 2006, we have saved our customers nearly $1 billion and we've helped them buy or sell more than 310,000 homes worth more than $152 billion.

For more information or to contact a local Redfin real estate agent, visit www.redfin.com. To learn about housing market trends and download data, visit the Redfin Data Center. To be added to Redfin's press release distribution list, email [email protected]. To view Redfin's press center, click here.

SOURCE Redfin

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