Two years after fleeing to the suburbs, homebuyers have flocked back to cities

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the housing market like no event since the 2008 financial crisis, but some of the trends induced by the pandemic are starting to reverse. That’s evident in the annual profile of home buyers and sellers from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which provides data on dozens of real estate trends.

When the pandemic began in the spring of 2020, wealthy residents of urban centers like New York City and San Francisco packed their bags for rural areas and small towns to escape strict lockdowns and find more space for things like home offices. This gave rise to the narrative that city dwellers wouldn’t return and urban centers were dying.

Turns out, they weren’t. Between 2017 and 2021, rural areas and small towns had remarkably consistent shares of the home purchase market at about 13% and 22%, respectively. But in 2022, the share of homes bought in rural areas (19%) and small towns (29%) jumped considerably.

These purchases came primarily at the expense of the suburbs, where the share of home purchases dropped from a consistent 50% level prior to the pandemic to 39% in 2022. Urban areas also took a hit, falling from 13% to 10%.

But in 2024, this trend has largely reversed. The share of home purchases in the suburbs has moved up to 45% while the 16% share in urban centers has actually moved ahead of where it was pre-pandemic.

Conversely, the share of purchases in rural areas (14%) and small towns (23%) have largely returned to their pre-pandemic levels.

When bad things happen in New York, pundits often say it’s the end of the city. But a lot of the post-pandemic migration among New Yorkers was intracity, meaning that falling rent and home prices in Manhattan were the result of people moving to Brooklyn.

While New York is operating much as it was before the pandemic, San Francisco has taken longer to recover because the population is heavily concentrated among tech workers. These companies have been more likely to adopt permanent work-from-home policies.

But many major tech companies are now calling workers back to the office, which has led to improved office market conditions in both New York and the Bay Area. 

Other data in NAR’s report also reflects a return to density. Prior to the pandemic, the median distance that homebuyers migrated from their old house to their new house was consistent at 15 miles. That number popped up to 50 miles in 2022 but has since fallen back to 20 miles. 

The age of homes purchased is also telling. Between 2009 and 2021, the typical home purchased was built in the early 1990s. In 2022 and 2023, however, the typical home purchased was built in the mid-1980s.

This is largely due to a delay in homebuilding caused by supply-line disruptions and shortages of construction materials. Appliances were hard to come by for builders as delays in computer chip deliveries ran rampant and lumber shortages caused prices to skyrocket.

Homebuilders are starting to catch up. Today, the typical purchase is for a home built in 1994, or roughly where it was pre-pandemic.