Good, good, good, good migration.

Anywhere you turn for data evidence, the future looks oh so bright for migration’s continued sweep toward America’s Sunbelt “smile” states.

Each year, three American stalwarts in the field of moving and mobility –

“Internal migration in the last decade—and especially in the year before the pandemic—reached historic lows, particularly among young adults. These millennials and Gen Z youths are now in their peak migration ages, but the pandemic has hit them hard.” – William Frey 

Note, for example:

There now appears to be a new mix of migration patterns across different parts of the country, as evidenced by real estate, moving, and survey data suggesting selective migration upticks and downticks due to both safety and economic concerns.

Still, newly released pre-pandemic census statistics show a continuation of the decades-long migration decline, bringing the percentage of Americans who changed residence to a post-World War II low of 9.3%. This one-year rate—between March 2019 and March 2020—occurred on the heels of a year when the nation’s total population growth fell to a 100-year low, with a continued downturn in the nation’s foreign-born population gains. Thus, even before the pandemic, the nation was in the throes of stagnating demographic dynamics.

What matters most for residential real estate and construction stakeholders, in other words, may have to do with a broad, deep, and long-range trend of stagnation. Twitchy, flight-to-safety reflexes–as pronounced as they appear to be–could be false indicators of what’s to come, which will more likely revert to that longer-range tendency among American householders to stay put.

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