Chicago south? Cape Coral targeted as place to relocate to by people living in Midwest city
Cape Coral is being targeted as a place to relocate to and buy a home by people fleeing bigger, more expensive cities, according to a new study by real estate brokerage company Redfin.
And it could mean more deep-dish pizza restaurants are in the Cape's future.
The data in the study is based on the searches of about two million Redfin.com users who viewed for-sale homes online across more than 100 metro areas from April 2023 to June 2023. In the study, Cape Coral is the seventh most popular destination for relocating homebuyers.
People are definitely looking to move with affordability being the No. 1 reason. A record one-quarter (25.5%) of Redfin.com users nationwide looked to move to a different metro area in the second quarter, up from roughly 23% a year earlier and about 19% before the pandemic.
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Who is looking to move to Cape Coral?
According to the study, people living in Chicago have their eye on Southwest Florida's fastest-growing city. For the study, Redfin uses what it calls "net inflow", a measure of how many more Redfin.com users looked to move into an area than leave.
Cape Coral is one of five Florida cities in the Top-10 for popular relocation destinations. The others are:
3-Tampa
4-Orlando
6-North Port-Sarasota
9-Miami
Las Vegas is the most popular destination for relocating homebuyers, topping Redfin’s list for the first time. People currently in ultra-expensive Los Angeles are looking at Las Vegas.
On the other end of the spectrum is "net outflow," the number of home searchers looking to leave a metro area, minus the number of searchers looking to move in. San Francisco was No. 1 for people looking to leave.
Redfin's study showed homebuyers are more motivated by affordability than other factors in choosing where to live. Cape Coral and nearly all of the most popular destinations have cheaper homes than the places out-of-towners come from.
Climate change and natural disasters, like Hurricane Ian, aren't big influencers in people's decision-making on where to relocate to and invest in a house.
A recent Redfin survey found that just 4% of U.S. residents who moved to a new metro in the last year did so because they were concerned about the impact of climate change on their previous area, compared with 20% who moved for a lower overall cost of living, 15% who wanted a better deal on a home and 13% who couldn’t afford a home/the cost of living in their previous area.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Cape Coral revealed as popular relocation destination in redfin study
