Media is full of stories about people fleeing the city for suburban or even rural climes during the pandemic. The data from real estate search sites tell a different story.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, writers have predicted that downtowns and urban areas would fall out of the favor that had defined the past decade-plus in the United States. According to an article by Marie Patino that cites multiple data sources, those predictions haven't yet come true:
A new report by City Observatory researcher Joe Cortright, made available as an interactive dashboard, suggests that such hand-wringing may be premature. Searches for urban properties on real estate website Zillow increased in 29 of the 35 largest U.S. metropolitan markets in April, compared with April of last year. Data from another website, Apartment List, show that more people were looking to live in New York City during that same month, the darkest one in terms of lives lost in New York, and much of the northeastern U.S.
The article includes soundbites from Cortright explaining the significance of the data reported in the new interactive dashboard, along with the significance of the ongoing preference for city living exhibited by young people.
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