A combination of the coronavirus pandemic, economic uncertainty, and social unrest is causing waves of Americans to move out of big cities and move permanently to more sparsely populated areas. The trend has been accelerated by technology and changing attitudes that make working remotely easier than ever. Residents of all ages and incomes move in record numbers to suburban areas and small towns.
A perfect storm of factors makes the decision to leave major cities like New York very obvious. The dense nature of urban life and the lack of proper local government planning led to the coronavirus spreading five times faster in New York than in the rest of the country. The city that never sleeps now looks like a ghost town in many areas after thousands of its wealthy and middle-class residents fled at the start of the pandemic.
Many move to small towns north of the five districts. Four northern counties of the state have seen a incredible increase in demand for real estate, while the rest of the New York market is in craters. In Ulster County, the number of homes now under contract nearly doubles 2016 figures. It saw steady sales in March and April, while the New York general market fell nearly 30 percent. Some people stay in their vacation homes, but the data suggests that there are many permanent moves underway.
An estimated quarter of a million New York residents will move to the northern part of the state forever, while another two million could permanently move out of the state. More than 16,000 New York residents have already moved to the Connecticut suburbs. the preliminary figures They show that New York is also losing citizens in rural New England and Florida in significant numbers. Similar trends are happening in other large urban areas. There is a political element to domestic migration at play across the country, but what is most revealing is the level of movement to suburban areas and rural towns.
More than 40 percent of urbanites have surfed online for real estate, more than double the level of people living in the country. Redfin reports that more than a quarter of the searches on its website are from urbanites in Seattle, San Francisco and the District of Columbia looking for housing in less populated places. While real estate sales have declined in San Francisco, where prices are falling by more than 50 percent, demand in its suburbs has skyrocketed, where prices are rising by almost 10 percent.
There has been a sharp increase interested in moving to Montana, with most new inquiries coming from California. Montana real estate sales are 10 percent higher than at this time last year. Rural Colorado, Oregon and Maine have seen similar increases in property sales. Vermont is going through a real estate revival, with an agent commenting that “people are buying houses without even seeing them.”
Some of the biggest changes are less obvious, but even hidden trends support the idea that cities are emptying. In March and April, more than two million young people they returned with their parents or grandparents. If the city’s appeal declines further due to the risk of disease, a bombing economy, and a future of teleworking, the flight to suburban and rural safety will continue long after a coronavirus vaccine hits the market.
Social unrest and spikes in the urban crime rate also increase the possibility of a sharp increase in departures from large cities. A collapse in order, especially if the police are rejected, could further reduce rebuilt cities with law and order approaches. Urban trends of the past 50 years are being reversed. Instead of smaller cities and rural areas facing steep declines, large metropolitan areas may soon be the places that bleed citizens.
The movements and circumstances that precipitated them are likely to cause profound changes in the places that receive the most coronavirus refugees. It is still too early to forecast the political impacts of these demographic trends, but they could be significant. Flooding from old urbanites could bring more taxes, restrictions and regulations to these areas.
On the other hand, an influx of money could revitalize the old industrial cities. A curious question is whether the waves of new residents will see these smaller areas as their real homes or as places of convenience that need to be reformed in the image of the cities they fled from.
Kristin Tate is a libertarian author and analyst for Young Americans for Liberty. She is a Robert Novak journalism fellow at the Fund for American Studies. Her most recent book is “The Liberal Invasion of the Red State of America”.
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