Home Seekers Leaving Their Markets in Record Numbers
One-quarter of home searchers sought relief from high mortgage rates, economic uncertainty.
The number of home seekers looking to change metro areas reached an all-time high in Q4, according to Redfin, as those who did purchase homes sought relief from elevated mortgage rates and a more affordable address.
Redfin pegged 24.6% of its website’s users up from 22.1% a year earlier and around 18% before the pandemic.
Add economic uncertainty to the list of factors, and it and the others were what caused the overall pool of homebuyers to shrink, Redfin wrote.
Pending home sales were down more than 30% from a year ago at the end of 2022, according to the real estate brokerage site.
“Many homeowners are also reluctant to move because they don’t want to give up their relatively low mortgage rate,” it said. “Eight of the top 10 migration destinations in the fourth quarter all had fewer homebuyers looking to move in than a year earlier.”
DC-MD-VA An Active Transit Area
JK Moving Services, the nation’s largest independently owned moving and storage company, reported that North Carolina and Florida were the most requested destinations for those moving from Virginia and Maryland, for example.
Virginia has been a transit state lately. A survey of 2022 by U-Haul found that Virginia and Alabama saw the biggest increases as destinations compared to the year earlier.
“Most people move within the region where they currently live,” David Cox, president, JK Moving, said in prepared remarks.
“For those moving out, what we saw this past year was a lot of interest in people in the DC region moving south and west—a shift from 2021 when northern locations and Florida were popular. Also, the number of inquiries about moving remained robust, even as home sales dropped.”
Californians Leaving for Texas
JK Moving Services’ survey also found that most Californians who were leaving were headed to Texas. The DC-MD-VA area was a top destination for Floridians.
DC residents leaving the area most often mentioned California and New York as their destinations.
California, Texas, Florida, and New York had the highest number of people leaving their states.