Homeward Bound: Cities With Greatest Pandemic Real Estate Booms

Published on March 30, 2022
Published on March 30, 2022
Staying at home has never been more of a priority, and many Americans are eager to invest in a new nest.
2020 has been full of surprises. The economic shutdown incited by the coronavirus pandemic has sent irrevocable shockwaves across vast economic sectors. While many industries have seen irreparable damage, causing businesses to shut down at alarming rates, some, like the housing market, have seen unexpected upturns.
Individuals who are not essential workers and are privileged enough to keep working remotely during COVID-19 seem to be experiencing a shift in priorities for their homes. Being close to the city’s center may have been a plus before the pandemic, but now in the age of constant Zoom meetings and extended stay-at-home orders, ample indoor space seems to be in higher demand. Vital components of city life like public transportation, live entertainment venues, and bustling bars and restaurants that may have been an initial draw to urban life are now seen as risky public health hazards. Major cities like New York City and Seattle with notoriously high demands for housing — and high prices to match — have seen their affluent homeowners start to look beyond city living.
Housing market trends are shaped by many socioeconomic and cultural factors, and home preferences are likely to cycle and change over time. There’s no denying, however, that the pandemic has had significant effects on real estate and the types of properties and locations that are now seen as desirable. To further understand COVID-19’s impact on the housing market, the data science team at Insurify examined national real estate data to identify the cities with the greatest surge in home sales during the pandemic.
The data science team at Insurify, a website to compare home insurance rates, analyzed the Housing Market Data report from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage. Redfin publishes timely data demonstrating trends in the housing market, including statistics regarding property prices, inventory, and sales across the United States on metropolitan and national levels. To identify the cities with the greatest uptick in home sales throughout the pandemic, researchers located the metropolitan areas within the U.S. that had the highest percentage of homes on the market sold month-over-month between April and July 2020, following nationwide lockdown in March. The number of homes sold month-to-month are recorded on a per month basis, so Insurify’s researchers took the average of home sales rates for April-July 2020 and ranked states based on the highest composite averages for the post-lockdown months. The number of new home listings and median sale prices as of July 2020 were additionally provided by Redfin.
1. Fergus Falls, MN - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 78.08%
2. Madison, IN - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 58.33%
3. Portsmouth, OH - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 58.33%
4. New Castle, PA - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 53.33%
5. Breckenridge, CO - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 51.45%
6. Alma, MI - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 50.90%
7. Marshall, MN - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 47.88%
8. Sandpoint, ID - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 47.60%
9. Sterling, CO - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 47.08%
10. Indiana, PA - Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 46.33%
Average rate of monthly home sales during quarantine: 34.75%
Average number of new listings per month: 64
Median sale price (July 2020): $312K
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*Calculation only inclusive of statistics from April-June 2020 (does not include estimates from July)
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