Young people might be moving to the Bay Area

Back in June, we reported that nearly 90% of relocation searches involving San Francisco were residents trying to move out of the area.

But this unprecedented exodus from the region does seem to now be slowing down.

While the majority of Bay Area searches are still from residents looking to leave, new data now suggests the imbalance between inbound and outbound moves is starting to normalize.

Using data from our relocation calculator, between July 1st to September 2nd, San Francisco outbound searches dropped to 65% while the other 35% of searches were people actually looking to move into the San Francisco-Bay Area.

New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles are some of the top cities residents are leaving to relocate to the Bay.

However, the return of interest in San Francisco does seem to be concentrated around one group; young, single people.

Nearly 70% of Bay Area inbound moves are for a studio apartment or less. This is very unusual. When you compare this to moves into the Bay Area over the same period last year, you get roughly 25% of moves are for a studio apartment or less.

Since young, single people tend to have smaller moves, this could suggest that younger people who were priced out of the city are now taking advantage of falling rents and moving in.

This isn’t that surprising. Before the pandemic, San Francisco already had fewer families than any other major city.

And the Bay Area is still an attractive place for young and ambitious entrepreneurs and professionals.

Top cities of people looking to move to the San Francisco-Bay Area:

Top states of people looking to move to the San Francisco-Bay Area:

Methodology

All data is sourced from searches performed on the moving cost calculator on our website. Data was taken from July 1st, 2020 through September 2nd, 2020. The percentages are out of the total number of people looking to move to the San Francisco-Bay Area.