WASHINGTON — Last quarter, 25 percent of home searches conducted via Redfin were searches in another metro, up from 23 percent a year earlier, and a record migration rate, based on Redfin’s data.
The national share of home searchers looking to relocate has been steadily increasing since Redfin began reporting on migration trends in early 2017.
The D.C. metro area ranks highly in the number of searchers looking elsewhere.
Redfin puts the D.C.-area at No. 4 on its migration list, with 10.7 percent of local users searching for homes elsewhere last quarter.
New York City is the top relocation metro for D.C.-area searchers.
San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and Denver also posted the highest net outflows in the fourth quarter, as defined by the number of people looking to leave the metro minus the number of people looking to move to the metro.
Seattle ranks with those cities for high housing prices, but Redfin said Seattle’s net inflow, based on searches, surged to make it the fifth most popular migration destination last quarter, behind Portland, Sacramento, Phoenix and Atlanta.
“In both Seattle and Denver prices were growing rapidly in 2017 and early 2018 to the point that buyers backed off in the second half of 2018,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather.
“However, people looking to leave high-tax metros for a city with mountain views and top-notch hiking are more likely to pick Seattle over Denver because Washington state doesn’t have an income tax. In fact, the top destination for Denverites looking to leave is Seattle.”
Below is a chart of top cities for migration outflows based on home searches, courtesy of Redfin:
