Chicagoans are the most likely of any city’s residents to be looking for a home where they already live, though nationwide interest in relocating remains high, according to data from Redfin.
Chicago has the highest portion of the site’s users – nearly 86% – who were looking for new homes in their own city, search data from the first quarter of 2022 shows.
Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, were close behind, with more than 82% of Redfin users in each of those cities set on staying put. More than half of the top ten cities on the list are located in the Sun Belt, including Los Angeles, Miami and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
But Chicago still made the top ten on the list of cities with the largest outflow, ranking seventh with just over 14% of Redfin users looking to relocate. The top destination for departing Chicagoans was Cape Coral, Florida, mirroring the broader trend in the data of Redfin users seeking sunnier locales.
San Francisco had the largest outflow, with nearly 24% of Redfin users from that city looking to leave, with Los Angeles and New York close behind.
Top destinations overall for home searchers looking to move were Miami, Phoenix and Tampa.
Interest in relocating has risen during the pandemic, with a record 32% of Redfin users looking to move away in the first quarter of 2022. That figure is up from 31.5% this time last year and significantly up from 26% in 2019, likely due to rising home prices and mortgage rates encouraging people to relocate for affordability.
The Redfin Migration Report examines a sample of about two million Redfin.com users who searched for homes across more than 100 metro areas each quarter, according to the site. The analysis looks at combined statistical areas with at least 500 Redfin users in Q1.
Though Chicagoans might be happy where they are, the city wasn’t drawing in a large proportion of newcomers, according to the site. Only about 12% of Redfin users looking in Chicago were searching from elsewhere, with Denver and Los Angeles residents topping the list relocation destinations, according to user search data.
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