Apartment Hunters Are Wealthier Than Ever

Migration picked up quickly following the lifting of COVID-era shelter-in-place orders, according to a new report from Apartment List, with more Americans moving in the year following the pandemic than in the prior year.

While the national mover rate has dropped by more than half since the mid-1980s, 16% of full-time workers moved between April 2020 and April 2021—and Google Trends now indicates that interest in apartment rentals is higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

Apartment hunters are also wealthier than ever before, thanks in part to the geographic flexibility granted by generous WFH policies and to the increasing unaffordability of homeownership. The average household income reported by Apartment List users is 5% higher than pre-pandemic levels, and that is reflected in renter budgets: in Q2 2021, Apartment List users were willing to spend an all-time high average of $1,335 for a new apartment, a 6.5% increase over Q1 numbers.

“It is not unusual to see budget increases this time of year, but in previous years the effect was much more subtle: budgets rose only 2.3% between the first and second quarters of 2020, and only 2.6% in the year before that,” Apartment List analysts Chris Salviati, Rob Warnock, and Igor Popov write in their report.

And those numbers are even more pronounced for so-called “cross-market movers,” those renters who left one city for another. About 20% of those who moved between April 2020 and April of this year moved to a new metro area, and Apartment List search data shows that 30% of prospective movers today are expecting to do the same.

“These cross-market moves are bringing larger out-of-town budgets into local markets. In fact, our data show that the further a renter looks to move, the more they plan to spend on their next home,” the report notes. The average budget for those searching to move within their current city on Apartment List during Q2 was $1,249; for those looking to move across metros, the budget jumped to $1,482. Budgets were highest for cross-state moves at $1,544.

This trend is true for the top 100 major metros in the US, Apartment List analysts say, though in cities like New York, New Orleans, and Pittsburgh, the gap between local budgets and residents looking to move in from out of state typically exceeds 25%. This is wreaking a bit of havoc on rents, particularly in cities like Boise, Riverside, Calif., and Fresno, which lead the country in year-over-year rent growth.

“Aided by the flexibility of remote work, wealthier renters are rearranging themselves across the country and putting additional pressure on already-competitive rental markets,” the report notes. “Typically, renter migration (and rent growth) cools each year during the late-fall and winter. Until then, as we continue through a summer free of travel and moving restrictions, the elevated mobility of high-income and high-budget renters will amplify affordability shortages in smaller rental markets.”