Over the weekend, the New York Times published a story about how there are bidding wars for homes in tristate area suburbs, and how urban apartment dwellers (especially those with kids) are worried about the uncertainties of living in crowded cities come winter. It’s the latest piece to explore the impacts of COVID-19 on national housing markets, and seems to support the theory that cities are being abandoned en masse in favor of suburbs. This theory has frequently been posited by the New York City–based news media, where TV producers and newspaper editors know many professionals with the means to relocate. But it seems to be something of a distorted narrative; The past six months of housing data clearly indicate that the trend is really only visible in two places (both of which were, until recently, among the most overheated housing markets on the planet): Manhattan and San Francisco, which were seeing outbound migration prior to the pandemic because of extremely expensive housing.
There’s no shortage of examples of the COVID-19 urban flight story. CNBC.com doubled down on it with a June headline of “The flight to the suburbs is real and growing.” On its cable network, CNBC recycles this narrative regularly, and opened a segment on the housing market this week by saying, “The housing market is staying hot as people continue to flee the big cities for the suburbs.”
If you live in a city, you probably know people who have left for the suburbs since the pandemic hit. There’s no denying the reality that many people have done this since March; many people also did this prior to the pandemic, and many more will do so in the years to come.
“People move out of New York all the time,” says Nancy Wu, an economist with StreetEasy. “The people who are moving to the suburbs to start a family there or to have a bigger place are looking now and buying their houses now, rather than renting in Manhattan for a few more years.”