By DSNews
According to a new Redfin report, a record one-quarter (24.6%) of Redfin users looked to move to a different metro area in Q4 as remote work allowed the few Americans buying homes to seek out less expensive areas amid an ongoing housing affordability crunch. That’s up from 22.1% a year earlier and around 18% before the pandemic.
The people who are buying homes are relocating at an unprecedented rate because elevated mortgage rates, still-high home prices and economic uncertainty are driving many of them–especially remote workers–to more affordable areas.
Meanwhile, those same factors also caused the overall pool of homebuyers to shrink, with pending home sales down more than 30% from a year ago at the end of 2022. Many homeowners are also reluctant to move because they don’t want to give up their relatively low mortgage rate. Eight of the top 10 migration destinations in Q4 all had fewer homebuyers looking to move in than a year earlier.
