Nearly a quarter of Denver-area residents looking for a home on Redfin.com are conducting their searches outside the metro area, and Seattle continues to provoke the most yearning.
In the fourth quarter, 24 percent of searchers based in metro Denver were looking at properties outside the region, according to a study from Redfin. A year ago, only 17 percent had a desire to go elsewhere.
Redfin also looked at the number of searches from other areas into Denver versus Denver house shoppers looking elsewhere. That went from 20 net searches in metro Denver’s favor a year ago to 2,577 net searches against it last quarter. That’s the fifth highest outbound total in the country, ahead of even Chicago.
That probably would be just another number, except that metro Denver’s housing market corrected sharply in the second half of the year.
“We are going to shift into more of a buyer’s market,” predicted Martin Mata, a Redfin agent in Denver.
Rapidly rising living costs are one reason why people look to move. But if that were true, why aren’t cities in Arizona, Texas or Florida ahead of Seattle, one of the few places where home price gains went crazier than in Denver?
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Redfin is based in Seattle, so home hunters may view it as a place to go for Seattle listings. But migration numbers show the Pacific Northwest has held a big draw on Colorado residents. Maybe it’s the Birkenstock connection, a shared love of nature and outdoor recreation. Or maybe Washington state’s lack of an income tax is the draw.
Or, Mata worries, maybe more of Denver’s young millennial tech wonks, the foundation of its future economy, are looking to bail for the next Nirvana.
