Whether Moving Out or In, DC Residents Are Staying Close

• November 16th 2011

by Shilpi Paul

District residents may be moving out, but they are staying close to the city, according to reports released by Trulia and The Washington Examiner recently.

Based on recently-released U.S. Census data, the Examiner found that Washingtonians moved around the area more in 2010 than in 2009, defying nationwide trends that showed “the lowest percentage [of people were moving] since the census started tracking Americans’ mobility in 1948.”

From the Examiner:

Nearly 34,000 people moved from the District to Maryland or Virginia in 2010, up from about 29,000 in 2009, according to census data released Tuesday. An additional 21,000 moved from Maryland and Virginia to the District, up from about 16,000 in 2009.

Real estate website Trulia found similar data. The site’s researchers analyzed users’ search data to create the Metro Movers Index, which relates house hunters’ current locations to the locations where they are searching for a new home.

Trulia found that, between July 2011 and September 2011, DC led the nation in “outbound” home searches, with 2.5 times as many people looking to move out of DC as into it. And the top two destinations for people moving out of the city gives some credence to the Examiner’s report. The top destination for city residents on the move was just over to the Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick region; second on the list was the area that includes Baltimore-Towson. The same trend basically held true for those moving into DC, as the largest percentage came from Baltimore-Towson and the second largest came from the Bethesda-Rockville-Frederick region.

The Trulia Index revealed a couple interesting nationwide trends, as well. For example, home buyers apparently dream of sunshine and tank tops, as Florida and California topped the list of “inbound” regions searched. In fact, the ten cities with the highest inbound ratios were all warm weather locales. And it appears that, like DC, New York City residents don’t want to venture too far from the big city; most outbound home searches from NYC strayed only to New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/trulia_and_the_census_report_dc_metro_residents_like_to_move/4590.