Bay Area is becoming more popular as a place ... to leave?
Redfin study shows that nearly a quarter of online searchers looking elsewhere to live
High home prices, expanding rush hours and maybe the futile search for a cheap cup of coffee and affordable avocado toast adds up to one thing — the Bay Area is getting more popular to leave.
A new study by Redfin shows about 24 percent of online searchers in the Bay Area are looking elsewhere for a home — up from 19 percent last year.
“We’ve seen a lot of people leaving San Francisco and that trend has only increased,” said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. She added that data from searches on the company’s website has been able to predict migration trends that later appear in census data.
The study looks at home searches done on Redfin in the last three months of 2018. Bay Area residents were the top searchers for homes in Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and Austin, Texas. The region outstripped New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. for highest concentration of Redfin users actively looking to leave their city.
The strong Seattle economy, relatively lower housing prices, and the ease of transferring to other tech companies make that city a favorite choice, Fairweather said. “It’s really about jobs,” she said. “If you’re already in the industry, it’s a really easy transition.”
The study highlights a trend of outward migration from the Bay Area, although until recently newcomers outnumbered those leaving. The nine county region’s tops-in-the-nation home prices — the median sale price for an existing home in December was $775,000 — have sent discouraged residents young and old to outof-state Realtors and moving companies.
An annual study released Wednesday by Joint Venture Silicon Valley confirms the steady migration away from the region. Silicon Valley gained roughly 20,500 foreign immigrants last year, while
22,300 residents moved to other regions and states.
Between July 2015 and July 2018, about 64,300 Silicon Valley residents left the region, replaced by 62,000 immigrants from other countries, according to the Joint Venture index.
Relocation has become a growing part of many local real estate agent’s portfolios.
Sacramento agent Devone Tarabetz has collected clients from San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Milpitas and Petaluma in the last year. “Affordability is usually the number one thing,” said Tarabetz, a San Jose native who has lived in Sacramento for two decades.
The mix of Bay Area clients going north include young families moving from San Francisco for a bigger home in a safer neighborhood to investors looking for deals on duplexes and small apartment buildings, she said. In the last year, she said, “I’ve seen a huge jump.”
She cautions newcomers about the weather (it’s hotter) and the schools (spotty) but encourages them to trade high rents and small apartments for single family homes in growing and safe communities. When they see their first homes, she said, “it’s a shock.”
Los Gatos agent Brian Schwatka has seen his business grow by focusing on older residents looking to leave Silicon Valley. The Sacramento region has been a favorite destination for several of his clients, he said, as well as Santa Rosa.
“People are looking for some sort of equivalent to the Bay Area,” he said. “It’s a mass exodus.”
Older Bay Area movers are generally looking for a less expensive area with the nice weather they’re used to — ruling out desert climates like Las Vegas and Phoenix, but opening up cooler spots like Portland and even Boise, Idaho, Schwatka said.
Idaho’s largest city has a population of 225,000, averages 30 inches of snow annually, and has summer
temperatures that peak at 90 degrees. It’s a twohour flight to the Bay Area, Schwatka said, making it an easy trip back to friends and family.
House hunters can find deals where the median home value is $287,000, according to Zillow. Prices have climbed 17 percent in the past year.
Many of his clients, he said, share a common refrain: “It just doesn’t feel like the old Silicon Valley anymore.”