Tampa among cities homebuyers are looking to move to during the pandemic
By Brendan Ward
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jun 26, 2020

Tampa has ranked among the top 10 cities where users are looking to move, based on its outflow or residents leaving the metro, versus inflow, residents coming to the metro.

In a recent report from Redfin, the city ranked No. 7 based on its net inflow, which is present when more people want to move into a city then out of it. Tampa had a net inflow of 3,745 people, up from 3,359 people last year. Over half, 57.7 percent, of home searches on Redfin’s platform came from outside the metro. The single largest source came from Orlando and the largest out-of-state source is Washington, D.C.

Miami also ranked among the top 10, falling a spot behind Tampa at No. 8. Phoenix, Sacramento, California and Las Vegas also ranked among the most popular.

On the opposite side, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles were among the cities with the highest outflow, which is present when more people want to move out of a city then into it.

Nationwide, 27 percent of homeowners on Redfin were looking to move to another metro in April and May. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, that rate is higher than Q2 2019 when 25.2 percent were looking to move metros and Q1 2020 when 26 percent were looking to move.

"While there has been a huge increase in the number of people looking online at homes in small towns, the long-term impact of the pandemic on people actually moving from one part of the country to another remains to be seen," Redfin economist Taylor Marr said in a statement. "People are starting to take the plunge and move away from big, expensive cities, though most of them were probably already considering a lifestyle change. The pandemic and the work-from-home opportunities that come with it is accelerating migration patterns that were already in place toward relatively affordable parts of the country. But for many people, the lure of large homes in wide open spaces will be a passing dream fueled by coronavirus-induced isolation."

These results are based on a sample of more than 1 million Redfin users who searched for homes in U.S. 87 metro areas in April and May. To be included, the user must have viewed at least 10 homes in a particular metro area, and homes in that area had to make up at least 80 percent of the user’s searches.

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