Many long-time New York City residents are considering to permanently relocate as a result of the pandemic, says a report.
Real estate professionals are noticing a sharp decline in real estate transactions across New York City as people shift focus to homes beyond the city. Specifically, for the affluent renters, a spike of interest in rental homes in Upstate New York, the Hamptons, Connecticut, and parts of New Jersey and Florida.
These locations were popular summer vacation rental spots, GS Data Services founder, CEO and, a licensed real estate agent, Garrett Derderian said, but many opted to decamp before the season starts.
Experts see this as a knee-jerk reaction to the pandemic, but some are also looking to move permanently long before the health crisis, protesting, and rioting. However, these events only forced these people to fast track their plans. For some, the high cost of living, noise, pollution, construction activities, traffic, rising taxes, fines, and penalties are just too much for them.
Experts also noted that density also played a role in New Yorker's decision to move to suburban areas such as Connecticut and New Jersey, which offers more space and distance. NYC has about 28,000 residents/square mile.
As more employees are now working at home, and since this arrangement allows them to move farther from New York, the trend is likely to continue, the report said. And the recent survey by Zillow seems to agree with this observation as 66 percent of respondents said they would consider moving given the flexibility to work from home as often as they want.
Among these employees, 31 percent would consider moving so they can live where there is a dedicated office space, 30 percent said they would move to upsize, and 29 percent would move to a home where there are more rooms.
Meanwhile, a record 27 percent of home searchers are looking to move to another metro area, according to the report covering April and May 2020 data with a sample of more than 1 million users. That figure is up from 25.2 percent in Q2 of 2019 and 26 percent in the Q1 of 2020.
According to the report, New York (25,099), San Francisco (24,235), Los Angeles (12,834), showed the biggest net outflow--more people are looking to move out than move in. Phoenix (7,576), Sacramento (6,419), and Las Vegas (5,718), which are considered to be relatively inexpensive metros, registered the highest net inflow in April and May.
The report attributes the trend of searching for homes from out-of-town partly to the pandemic, as these suburbs and smaller towns offer more room to work from home. The analysis included Redfin users that have viewed at least ten houses in a specific area, and the homes in that particular area must make up at least 80 percent of a user's home searches.
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