HOW NATIONWIDE MIGRATION PATTERNS ARE AFFECTING SWFL REAL ESTATE

Ever wonder if your phone is tracking you? Well, it is. But that's besides the point of this article. We recently learned that Orlando, FLA. Updater, a data compnay, which is part of NAR (National Association of Realtors®) looks at data from phone companies in order to track and analayze how and where people move to around the country (and even the world!) They do this by simply looking at wifi account changes! Which makes sense, since when do people up and move their entire life and not take their phone with them!?

Turns out that there were over 300,000 moves reported within the United States alone over the past year.

 

An interesting tid bit of information that comes along with that, is within those 300,000 moves, Florida metros showed a significant increase in population in the first three months of 2021. During the pandemic times, people were moving out of cities in swarms! Now that the pandemic times are subsiding, people are slowly moving back to the city.

The need for a change in scenaery is what attracted people to places like Florida. Florida was actually ranked as the 4th top most attractive place to live in 2021, and FT MYERS, FL was ranked the best city to live in! See below for the most notable local rankings:

1. FT MYERS
5. SARASOTA
11. TAMPA
12. WEST PALM BEACH
13. LAKELAND
16. JACKSONVILLE

Bottom line, what can we learn from this? We have the data to back up the intense buyer demand that we are seeing in the real estate market. The inventory is incredibly low, but the buyers just keep coming in. If you're interested in selling, NOW is the time to do it!

Source: “United States Migration Report: Q1 2021,” Updater (2021)