Is the grass greener in another city? That’s what many apartment renters seem to believe, according to the latest research from Apartment List.
According to Apartment List’s annual Renter Migration Report released in mid-March, 39% of renters on Apartment List were searching for their next home in a new metropolitan area. And 24% of renters were considering a long-distance move to a new state.
And where are renters moving from and to? Apartment List says that many renters are preparing to move out of states in which monthly apartment rents are high, especially in coastal markets, to ones in which they’ll pay less each month. This trend is a positive one for the Midwest, where many markets feature lower monthly rents.
Here’s an interesting example: Apartment List found that 37% of site users renting in Chicago are searching for their next apartment in a different metropolitan area. The most popular outbound destinations are Milwaukee, Indianapolis and Dallas.
In the other direction, 19% of users searching for Chicago apartments are based in a different metropolitan area. The greatest number of inbound searches for Chicago apartments are coming from Dallas, Milwaukee and New York City.
What about other Midwest markets?
Apartment List found that 31,6% of searches for Milwaukee apartments on the site came from out of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. A total of 32.2% of these searches came from Chicago, while 5.2% came from Madison and 3.6% from Minneapolis.
Renters who live in Milwaukee but are searching Apartment List for a new city in which to rent are most often looking at Madison (10.7% of searches), Chicago (10.4%) or Racine, Wisconsin (4.3%.)
Apartment List found, too, that 22.7% of searches for Minneapolis apartments on the site came from out of the metropolitan area. Renters who don’t live in Minneapolis now but want to rent in the city are most often based currently in Chicago (9.6%); St. Cloud, Minnesota (3.7%); or New York City (3.6%). Renters looking to leave Minneapolis are most often searching Apartment List listings in Des Moines (7.4%); Fargo, North Dakota (5.1%); and St. Cloud, Minnesota (3.9%).
And 24.4% of the Apartment List searches for St. Louis multifamily spaces came from outside that metropolitan area, with 12.4% coming from Chicago, 6% from Kansas City and 3.8% from Columbia, Missouri.
Of renters who live in St. Louis and are searching listings in other markets, Apartment List said that 9.5% were searching for space in Springfield, Missouri; 5.7% in Kansas City, Missouri; and 5.2% in Chicago.
