Has the renaissance of our urban cores petered out or will the movement of suburban refugees to denser metro neighborhoods continue? Let's see what demographics and economics tell us.
During the recession and post-recession years, between 2006 and 2015, urban areas around the country saw a major influx of new residents as millennials and former-suburb dwellers moved into downtowns and denser urban neighborhoods. Writing in Medium, economist Lyman Stone seeks to find out if this inflow migration to urban cores is a lasting phenomenon or just a "migration bubble." He finds that part of the inflow explanation was driven by cheaper housing in urban areas at the beginning of the recession.
Migrants moved in pursuit of cheaper housing during the recession, with many foreclosed on, and fewer pursuing ownership. This wasn’t because they wanted a better home or a better neighborhood: those reasons became less prevalent. It’s because the relative costs of urban renting suddenly became much more favorable.
As prices in the urban core have increased in comparison to housing costs in suburban areas, the inflow migration has slowed. Essentially, Stone explains, the imbalance that saw people move into urban areas is shifting back to where we were pre-recession as suburbs become the more affordable option once again.
When we look at the last few years of migration, we should see it as a bubble. It was never going to last very long, and was always the product of essentially transient imbalances of in costs that migrants rapidly arbitraged. We are now returning to the normal state of suburban and exurban inflows, and urban outflows.
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Those of us whose professional lives are inextricably linked to the real estate development economy in one way or another have had plenty of time in the last year to twiddle our thumbs and attempt to figure out what the heck happened. This much we know — there was a housing bubble some places, it burst, and the economy collapsed. Have you ever slipped and fell – one those unexpected spectacular aerial feats where your feet fly out from underneath you, you look down your legs and see your toes at eye level pointing to the sky, and you say to yourself “this is really going to hurt when I land”? That’s what this year has been like for many, some of whom are still waiting to hit hard because they had projects in the pipeline and they are grinding their way through “inventory” of unfinished work. Plus, we started from a high plateau. Wall Street types call the unexpected but apparent life in the market during the first part of a recession “dead cat bounce” which Forbes defines as “a temporary recovery from a prolonged decline or bear market, after which the market continues to fall.” Even a dead cat dropped from a very high place will bounce a little when it hits the ground…
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Analysis: Cybertruck Fatality Rate Far Exceeds That of Ford Pinto
The Tesla Cybertruck was recalled seven times last year.
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