Recessionary flight from the cities?

[lamont]

The house I'm living in right now (a rental with 4 units), now has 2 vacancies. One vacancy is not recession-related, but the other one is a family which is moving back to Montana.

The recession has caused people to start pinching pennies on their spending. When do we start to see people in cities look at the cost of living in cities and decide to move to somewhere more affordable? I remember from the last downturn that there was a trend of people who had moved to SF or Seattle to follow the high tech boom turning around and moving back out to more rural areas where life was cheaper. So far I haven't seen any news articles on this becoming a trend -- has anyone else seen it?

And we know that housing prices in more rural areas has been cratering -- with real estate agents trying to claim that housing in Seattle proper would hold steady for various different rationalizations. In my mind this seems to be more like an "arbitrage" situation, but in a market which is very slow to react because people need to physically move. So, when does the trend start of people deciding that the "average" $450k house near downtown Seattle looks like a really bad deal compared with moving somewhere they can buy a nice house for $150-200k?

I haven't seen this in any newspaper articles yet, am I anticipating the trend, or am I just not looking in the right places?

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[Markor]

Detroit houses are only $1, or $100 if you want to live on the lake. Where do they flee to?

[Charles Dean]

I think it would all have to do with employment. They're alot more likely to "flee" to where they can make money. That's not necessarily away from the city.

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[jon]

Some speculation here what a depression would look like:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas ... ?page=full

Thankfully the price of oil has dropped and so we aren't sending quite so much money to countries fomenting violence. The economic problems of the Depression led to WW II, hopefully we can avoid that happening again.

If we do get a high level of unemployment here, the public works projects can be building huge solar power plants.

[SeattleMoose]

Lamont, you make an excellent point.

I lived in LA during the recession of early 1990's. During that time a LOT of Californians moved to other states both to find work and to lower their housing costs.

I lived in Seattle during the late 60's after the great Boeing layoff when the "Last One Out of Seattle Please Turn Off The Lights" billboard was up. A lot of my friends parents moved their families out of state.

During hard times it very common for "disaporas" to occur. This time will be no different. Seattle is one of the 5 most expensive cities in the U.S. This does not bode well as the recession deepens and people are forced to make tough decisions. If MS or Boeing have layoffs it will only expedite the trend.

[Trina]

Seattle is one of the 5 most expensive cities in the U.S.

I have seen different lists of the most expensive cities and have never seen Seattle in the top 5.

[deejayoh]

[WestSideBilly]

[SeattleMoose]

According to this site Seattle is one of the top 5 most expensive cities in the U.S. with respect to RE prices:

[deejayoh]

[deejayoh]

Compare these two views of Seattle
1) from Altos Research - SFR asking prices for the city of Seattle only



2) from housing watch - SFR asking prices for who knows what definition of seattle


(Note how the inventory jumped by a third in mid October)

which looks right to you?

[FreedomLover]

It seems that some people on housing bubble blogs are almost gleeful at the prospect of mass flight from cities and a coming global economic depression. Why would they want that?

[perfectfire]

Wasn't it just a few months ago that the hot topic was how people we're fleeing the suburbs to live in the city because of high gas prices. It's crazy how things change so quickly. It's probably time for The Tim to revisit the topic on the blog. Maybe when oil breaks below $50.