Your new neighbor might be an out-of-towner with a fat wallet.
Outsiders moving to Philadelphia, New York City, Atlanta, Dallas, Portland and other cities tend to have higher budgets compared to local buyers, according to an analysis of the average maximum list-price for saved home searches on Redfin
RDFN,
an online real-estate brokerage.
The average newcomer to Philadelphia, the poorest of the top 10 big cities in the U.S. surveyed, had a maximum of about $588,000 budgeted for their new home, for instance — 39% greater than local buyers’ average maximum budget of around $422,000, the biggest gap observed in the analysis, Redfin said.
The difference in budgets can be attributed in part to out-of-towners with big salaries pouring in from coastal cities with plenty of cash to spare from selling their previous homes, Redfin said. They may also have the benefit of salaries from bigger cities like New York given that more people are allowed to work remotely.
“‘Philadelphia sits right between New York and D.C., both places where the cost of living is essentially triple what it is here.’”
“Philadelphia sits right between New York and D.C., both places where the cost of living is essentially triple what it is here,” local Redfin agent Trey Dodge said in a statement.
“Full-time remote workers — and some people who commute the 90 minutes to New York a few days a week — realize they can get more for their money here, while still reaping the benefits of a big-city lifestyle. I’ve watched home prices rise over the last two years, and it’s mostly because out-of-towners are buying high-end properties,” he added.
All of that may weigh on the locals’ ability to offer their city’s brotherly love. However, despite Philadelphia’s attractiveness, home prices there have still grown slower compared to nationwide rates.
Here are some of the other budget differences Redfin observed:
- Out-of-towners coming into Atlanta had 29.9% more to spend on a home on average, with a maximum of $849,477 to spend compared to locals’ average top budget of $653,849.
- Dallas newcomers had a maximum budget 22.2% higher than locals were willing to spend, since they had an average maximum of $815,613 compared to locals’ typical maximum budget around $667,404.
- In Phoenix, the nation’s fastest-growing big city of the past decade, out-of-towners had 12.9% more to spend on a home, with an average maximum budget of $805,257 compared to locals’ maximum budget of $713,378.
Meanwhile, the high budgets from New York City’s out-of-towners are a bit of a different issue, Redfin said. Many are actually rich New Yorkers coming back to the city after working remotely from rural and suburban areas during the pandemic, Redfin said. As a result, out-of-towners had an average maximum budget of $1.3 million compared to locals’ average maximum of $998,011.
