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A new analysis of U.S. Postal Service address-change data by the National Association of Realtors shows the Greater Boston area saw an uptick in migration last year, while moves to Greater Worcester slowed down notably.
The study by NAR senior economist Nadia Evanglou ranked American metro areas by what it called their “inbound move rate” in 2022: the number of inbound moves divided by the combined number of inbound and outbound moves. An inbound move rate of over 50 percent indicated the region was gaining population.
Greater Boston’s inbound move rate was 50.1, although NAR also included New Hampshire’s Seacoast region in its calculations. The Worcester metro – which also includes Connecticut’s most northeasterly county, Tolland – registered 47.2 percent. The Pioneer Valley hit 46.1 percent.
But just as significantly, Evanglou also calculated change in the number of inbound moves in each metro area, and found the number of people moving into Greater Boston increased 2.6 percent year-over-year in 2022, while the number of people moving into Greater Worcester fell 13.4 percent. Migration into the Pioneer Valley also slumped, by 12.3 percent.
A surge of homebuying demand last spring that pushed home prices in numerous Central Massachusetts towns up much faster than anywhere else in the state. Brokers and real estate agents attributed the surge in demand to the area’s relative cheapness compared to the Boston area and the rise in remote work. However, the total number of single-family home sales in Worcester County ended the year down 13 percent over 2021 according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, as mortgage interest rate increases and rapid home price appreciation pushed many out of the housing market.
Nationally, the top three metro areas attracting new residents were Ocala and Tallahassee, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina; Florida held four of the top 10.
Aside from being located in the Sun Belt, these metro areas attracting the most out-of-town movers also had on average 5 percent more jobs in 2022 than at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Evanglou wrote in the study, while their economies recovered from the pandemic much faster than most Midwest areas and higher-cost coastal metros like New York City. But the biggest differentiator, Evanglou said, was housing affordability.
Outside the Sun Belt, top migration locations included Connecticut’s Fairfield County – one of New York City’s wealthier suburbs – Washington, D.C., Stockton, California and Virginia Beach, Virginia.
