What? No one wants to move here?
Check out this new report by Trulia. It puts Boston - and Washington, D.C. as well - at the bottom of the heap in terms of interest by potential home buyers from other parts of the country.
Trulia takes a snapshot of online house hunting habits and comes away with some interesting findings. In particular, the online real estate site looks at the markets potential buyers, and for that matter renters, are searching from, and then matches it up with the metro areas they are looking at.
Basically, Boston comes in No. 3 in the top 10 markets where there are lots of people looking elsewhere for new homes and apartments, but not a lot of folks looking in.
The scoring system is simple - if it's above 1, there are more people looking at buying into a particular market than leaving it. And if it's below 1? Well then it's a case where you have far more people looking to move out than move in.
Really, can it be a coincidence that Washington, D.C. and Boston occupy the No. 1 and No. 3 spots? After all, home prices in both cities remain high - even inflated - and rents are rising now as well.
Here's the chart.
Housing Demand Weakest in Washington DC, Chicago and Boston
# U.S. Metropolitan Area Metro Movers Index
1 Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV 0.37
2 Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL 0.41
3 Boston-Quincy, MA 0.44
4 Salt Lake City, UT 0.44
5 Louisville-Jefferson County, KY-IN 0.45
6 St. Louis, MO-IL 0.46
7 New Haven-Milford, CT 0.47
8 Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway, AR 0.47
9 Kansas City, MO-KS 0.47
10 New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ 0.49
