A young girl at a farmers' market in Portland, Maine, dances in the rain with an umbrella. This coastal New England city was the most-viewed city by Bostonians looking to relocate.
Portland Press Herald /Contributor/ Getty Images
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider
subscribers. Become an Insider
and start reading now.Have an account? .
During the first three months of 2022, about 32.3% of Redfin users were looking to relocate.
Most of the people considering a move were from the biggest US cities like New York and LA.
These buyers were interested in moving to cheaper, nature-filled areas.
Many Americans have moved during the pandemic, and since the beginning of 2022, big city residents in particular have been keen to relocate, apparently ready to trade their proximity to the office for smaller, nature-filled cities, where homes are less expensive.
The nation's biggest metropolises, including New York and Los Angeles, saw the largest number of residents looking to move out during the first three months of this year, a Redfin analysis of 2 million homebuyers showed.
But it wasn't just those living in some of the most office-dense cities in the nation that sought to move somewhere new.
Overall, 32.3% of potential homebuyers on Redfin looked for new houses outside of their current cities in the first quarter of the year — a share even higher than a year ago, when 31.5% of users were looking to relocate.
The trend took off during the pandemic, when many people began to work from home. In 2019, only 26% of homebuyers on the site were looking to relocate, according to Redfin, which tracks the number of users who search for homes in places other than their current location.
"Being close to the outdoors has always been a desire of homeowners, but before the pandemic, homebuyers placed a higher priority on being close to the office," Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist, told Insider. "Now with remote work, more homebuyers are living out their dream of living close to nature."
Using information from 2 million Redfin users, the home-buying platform determined the top 10 cities with the highest outflow by tracking where each user looked in their searches on the site. Insider used that data point to create this list and compiled Census data, Realtor.com's typical home-price data from this March, and information about each place to reveal patterns.
People looking to move didn't always browse cheaper spots. For example, while Cape Coral, Florida, was the most searched destination for those looking to move from Chicago, the cost of a typical home in Chicago is actually cheaper. And the destinations of choice aren't always more nature-filled than the cities left behind. While Phoenix was the most popular search destination for those looking to get out of rainy Seattle, the latter is considered a more outdoorsy city.
The list is based on where users of the site viewed, not where they moved. Still, it provides some insight into why people are moving out of some of the nation's most populous square miles. Here are seven big cities that people are looking to leave, and some of the places they're thinking about going.
The Chicago-to-Cape Coral trend is the only one on this list where residents looked to move to a less-affordable location.
But Cape Coral is situated on the Gulf of Mexico and teeming with nature. It's close to parks, fresh water, hiking trails, and it's only a few hours from Everglades National Park.
Some Bostonians are looking to move to another, smaller harbor city in New England, where life is quieter and much cheaper. Since the beginning of the year, 14,173 of the 2 million people included in the survey who lived in Beantown searched outside it. Their most likely prospect? Portland.
About a two-hour drive from Boston, Portland is home to about 68,000 people — just a fraction of the population of Boston, where over 675,000 people live, according to Census data.
The Maine city also boasts a number of nature-filled experiences that you can't get along the T train — you can go white-water rafting, kayaking, and fishing in the lakes around the city, and camping and hiking at nearby parks. You can also stroll along Casco Bay to look at the lighthouse, or in the summer go to the coast for a beach day.
Near two iconic national parks, Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park, Seattle has no shortage of outdoor opportunities.
But the cost of living in Seattle is much higher than in Phoenix, where the majority of outbound migrators moved after leaving Washington's largest city, known for being extra rainy (there's precipitation about 150 days a year).
Bucking another trend on this list, Phoenix, home to 1.6 million, is actually larger than Seattle, which has a population of 737,000, Census data shows.
4. Washington, DC → Salisbury, Maryland
A beach in Salisbury, Maryland, at sunset.
Kendra Kane / EyeEm/Getty Images
People wanting to ditch the swampy Potomac most often looked to nearby beach towns for oceans breezes and a more affordable price tag.
Many of those who left DC in the last quarter moved two hours away, to Salisbury, Maryland, about 30 miles west of Ocean City.
The cost of a typical home in Salisbury is less than half the cost of a typical home in DC. It's also smaller — Salisbury is home to 33,000 people while Washington, DC, is home to 689,000, according to Census data.
Swaths of New York City residents looked to leave the largest city in America to relocate to the Sunshine State, trading in New York winters for warm weather year-round. While Miami has made headlines for its surging home prices over the past two years, it doesn't hold a candle to the cost of a typical home in New York, which cost an average of $855,000 as of March, while a typical Miami home cost $515,000.
Miami is also home to an abundance of nature — in addition to its beaches, there's also Biscayne National Park, the largest marine park in the US, which is home to stingrays, sharks, and many tropical fish.
2. Los Angeles → San Diego
The shoreline in San Diego.
ShutterRunner.com (Matty Wolin)/Getty Images
Last quarter, residents of the nation's second-largest city were most likely to look to move an hour and a half down the Pacific Coast highway, where home prices are cheaper (though still quite expensive compared to the national median of $492,000). There's also less air pollution and traffic.
While San Diego is still a big city, with a population of 1.38 million, it's a fraction of the size of LA, which has a population of 3.8 million, according to Census data.
1. San Francisco → Sacramento
Sacramento at sunset.
Provided by jp2pix.com/Getty Images
Net outflow from San Francisco in Q1: 52,964 people
Residents of San Francisco, one of the largest office markets in the country, appeared to be seeking an alternative to sky-high prices in the first three months of this year.
According to Redfin data, residents in the city of over 873,000 were the most likely to look to move elsewhere this year.
They most frequently considered California's capital, Sacramento, which has a smaller population (524,000) and much cheaper home prices.
