Many renters currently living in Detroit are looking to get out, and many of those looking to come into the region are looking outside the city.
That’s the word from Apartment List’s 2020 Migration Report, which analyzes the metros people are looking to call their new home.
According to the organization’s data, 46.8 percent of apartment hunters currently living in Detroit are searching for apartments outside the city while 18.2 percent of those looking for a place to live in the area are searching outside the city.
The most popular destinations for those looking to move away from the city are Cleveland. Cincinnati and Grand Rapids.
“This combination of a high share of residents looking to leave and low share looking to move in from elsewhere is reflective of the fact that Detroit’s recovery is still ongoing, and the region is not currently drawing a great deal of interest from those in other parts of the country,” says Chris Salviati, housing economist at Apartment List.
Detroit is drawing some interest from Flint where 38.7 percent of those who want to leave that city are looking to move to Detroit, according to Salviati. On the flip side, among those looking to move to Flint from elsewhere, 71.4 percent are currently living in Detroit, he says.
Flint, by comparison, has 39.4 percent of its inbound searches coming from outside the city, while 68.6 percent of those currently living in Flint are looking to move elsewhere. Moves to and from Flint are characterized by strong ties to Detroit, says Salviati.
Other than Flint, renters looking to move to the Detroit metro from elsewhere are most likely to be searching from Chicago or Grand Rapids. The numbers are small, though, 9.5 percent from Chicago and 8.2 percent from Grand Rapids.
“Our report shows that just 16.2 percent of searches for apartments in the Detroit metro are coming from outside the metro, which is the second lowest share among the nation’s 50 largest metros,” Salviati says.
That’s a decrease from the 18.2 percent rate in Apartment List’s first quarter edition of the report.
In short, it means Detroit has the third highest share people looking to move outside the city of all the cities surveyed.
Let’s take a quick look at where people are moving.
Denver ranks first in the Apartment List’s report. Nearly half of searches are from people currently living outside the city.
“With a thriving job market fueled by a years-long tech boom, Denver continues to attract renters from around the country, even as the area’s housing costs continue to increase,” the study says.
Baltimore ranked second, but for a very different reason than Denver. While Denver draws interest from around the country, Baltimore ranks high on the list because of it is an affordable alternative to Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s most expensive rental markets. Two-thirds of those looking to Baltimore as a place to live are currently based in D.C.
Click here to read the entire report.