Home Purchasers Leaving Cities in Favor of Resort Towns

In the eye of the pandemic, resort towns like the Jersey Shore and Cape Cod are evolving into the permanent go-to places for homebuyers—especially those scurrying from big cities like New York and San Francisco and with the leeway to work from home, according to Redfin.com.

Redfin’s ranking is based on year-over-year fluctuations in home prices and sales, as well as the share of residences that sold about their list price, the speed of home sales, and Redfin.com searches.

For the second consecutive time, among the 10 most popular counties, El Dorado County, California, spanning from the eastern outskirts of Sacramento to the southern half of Lake Tahoe, placed first. Placer County hit the top 10 as well. Meantime, San Francisco was the most popular spot for out-of-area buyers searching for a home in Sacramento, while Riverside County, home to the desert resort city of Palm Springs, landed among the top 10 as well.

Number two was Deschutes County, Oregon, located a few hours southeast of Portland.

“We’ve always described Bend as a second-home town, but now we’re seeing it transition into a place where more people are living full time because they’re no longer required to go into the office. We joke that it’s becoming a `Zoom town,’” said local Redfin real estate agent Angelica Webb. “A lot of folks are moving to Bend without having ever stepped foot here. They’ve heard good things and want to get out of their cramped San Francisco or Seattle apartments, so they’re coming here and buying awesome, 3,000-square-foot colonial homes.”

Looking more closely at working at home patterns during the pandemic, the suburbs are having a moment as Americans are beginning to work more there due to COVID-19 and it becomes less necessary for workers to live in downtown areas, according to TheMReportcom.

But there are some other new migration patterns that have come about since the pandemic began making headlines in January.

Bankrate.com analyzed data from the United States Postal Service (USPS) from January 1, 2020, to mid-September of 2020 and has broken it down to find the current moving trends and how migration has shifted due to the pandemic.

As more Americans work remotely, people now have greater flexibility to work from anywhere and are likely to seek out areas outside the city with more space. While people have started to leave downtown areas, they are still staying mostly within the metro area but moving out towards the suburbs.

For example, those who moved out of Houston, Texas were likely to move to nearby Texas towns like Katy, Cypress, Spring, Richmond, and Humble, which were all 32 miles or less away from downtown Houston.