Are 2 in 5 DC-Area Renters Looking to Move?

• January 22nd 2020

by Nena Perry-Brown

Apartment List's latest Renter Migration Report purports that nearly 38% of renters in the greater DC region are looking to move.

Using ApartmentList searches from June through December 2019, the report shows that 37.8% of renters who currently live in the region are hunting for apartments outside of the metro area. Of the 25 largest metro areas studied, the DC region ranked 6th for renters seeking to move elsewhere. Orlando, Florida and Riverside, California tied for first place, with half of renters in those areas searching for an apartment in another metropolitan area.

The most prevalent search destinations for DC-area renters are Philadelphia (14.8% of searches), Baltimore (14.6% of searches), and, by a much slimmer margin, New York City (4.9% of searches). Baltimore seems to be an attractive option for DC-area renters looking to save money while staying local, as two-thirds of the renters searching for somewhere to rent in Baltimore are currently based in the DC area. DC-area renters are also the most prevalent apartment-hunters in the Denver area, accounting for 10.5% of in-bound searches.

Of the people searching for apartments in the DC area, 25.6% live outside of the region, although there seems to be a lot of cross-migration among the aforementioned metro areas. 10.9 percent of those apartment-hunters are searching from New York City, while 10% are searching from Baltimore and 6.1% are searching from Philadelphia.

This study identifies user location by IP address and defines the DC metro area using the Census parameters for the Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes far-flung areas such as Frederick, Maryland; Jefferson County, West Virginia; and Spotsylvania, Virginia.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/are-nearly-2-in-5-dc-area-renters-looking-to-move/16362.