Expect a Big Year for Moving Companies, Survey Says

"If you’ve been considering moving to a new city or town in 2021, you’re far from alone," writes Sommer Mathis to introduce results from a City Monitor survey about moving preferences to begin 2021, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic that has sparked non-stop talk of an urban exodus.

"At the end of last year, City Monitor surveyed 1,301 professionals in over 70 countries around the world to find out whether they were considering a move in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic," explains Mathis. "Overall, 29.6% of respondents said they were actively considering a move to a new location in 2021, while a further 12.9% reported that they had already moved to a new city or town in 2020."

Those numbers benefit from the perspective of findings from the previous five years of American Community Survey data: in the five years leading up to the pandemic, only about 13% of U.S. households moved each year.

According to the Mathis, the survey results "suggest that the pandemic has had a dramatic impact on how working professionals everywhere are thinking about where they want to live and why."

The article shares additional survey results, like insight into the motivations behind the desire to move, the demographics of the respondents expressing a desire to move, and more.