The percentage of U.S. residents who move to another home has been steadily declining since 2000.
By Manuel Gutierrez, Consulting Economist to NBKA
Americans have had a tradition of constantly being on the move, ever since early-1800s settlers were implored to “Go West.”
Geographic mobility clearly is very important to the housing and K&B industries. People either move to a new home or purchase an existing one, frequently driving a remodeling project not long afterward. Additionally, sellers often engage in some remodeling as well, to make their homes more appealing.
Figure 1 uses data beginning from the late 1940s (the earliest available), which covers a period from 1948 through 1985. It shows an increasing number of homeowners moving over that time.
By 1985, the number relocating peaked at 46.5 million over a 12-month period.
The mobility rate of U.S. citizens has steadily dropped over the years, and is now under 10% each year compared to an earlier average of 20%.
In the following 15 years, from 1986 through 2000, the number of movers remained relatively stable, ranging between 41 million and 43 million people annually.
Since 2000, however, the actual number has been declining annually.
By last year, 29.7 million moved to a different home, almost the same number who had moved back in 1948 — even though today’s population of 331 million is more than double the 147 million from the earlier period.
The mobility rate measures the proportion of the U.S. population who move to a new location in a given year.
Figure 2 shows the mobility rate from 1948 until last year. While the rate remained relatively flat through the mid-Sixties, hovering around 20% from 1948 through1968, it began a slow, steady decline through last year.
In 2020, the overall rate was 9.3% — less than half its post-War peak.
In the early years shown in the chart, Americans were moving into a new home about once every five years. That figure has fallen to almost one move every 10 years.
Currently, though, mobility rates are heavily influenced by a younger population, including students, many of whom change housing as frequently as each year. As a result, it’s instructive to look at mobility rates by home tenure, that is, whether the home is owned or rented. The total mobility rate shown in Figure 2 is the average of owners and renters.
Figure 3 separates the trend for owners and renters (note that the charts use different scales.)
Homeowner mobility is much lower than that of renters. In fact, owners’ 5.5% rate last year is less than a third of the 17.8% rate of renters.
Noticeably, the rate for both has fallen by approximately half over the last three decades. While the renter mobility rate has fallen steadily throughout this period, however, that of homeowners bottomed at 4.7%in 2011. Since then, the mobility ratio has bounced around 5%.
An interesting aspect of mobility is that the majority of people who move to a different residence do so within the same county.
Figure 4 shows the three types of geographic moves by homeowners. The shaded gray area at the top, where most people fall, represents those who remain within the same county when moving. The light blue signifies those who left their county but remained in-state. The green shows those who moved out of state, while the red sliver represents people who moved abroad.
Although the number who have moved has changed over the past 33 years, the pattern of where they move has remained relatively constant. For instance, in both 1988 and 2000, an identical 57% of those who moved remained within the same county. From a business perspective, this means that the best and easiest remodeling prospects are homeowners already living in the same relative vicinity.
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