PROVIDENCE – Interest in moving to Rhode Island and the Northeast was much stronger than much of the rest of the country in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to rent.com.
The national online renters’ database owned by eBay studied patterns and preferences pulled from anonymized user data collected from October, November and December. That information was combined into a single unit called “lead delta,” which measures the difference between the number of inbound and outbound leads as a proportion of all leads within a particular geographic area.
A “lead” is a rental industry term that means a prospective renter is interested in a rental property. A large lead delta marked high migration interest while negative lead delta indicated the state saw more outbound searches than inbound searches and is decreasing in popularity.
Data showed Rhode Island ranked fifth in increased interest in migration to the state at 24.9% compared to leaving, according to the March study. The Northeast as a whole saw a net gain in migration interest of 3.3%. That was the largest regional gain in the nation and much better than its minus 6.6% posting in the third quarter of 2022.
Earlier in 2021, the Northeast recorded the lowest levels of migration interest in the country. The region logged a lead delta of minus 6.5% in the second quarter and minus 1.6% in the first quarter, according to rent.com.
Alaska showed the highest interest among prospective renters looking to switch states in the fourth quarter of 2022 with a lead delta of 38.8%. North Dakota, New Jersey and Delaware rounded out the top four above Rhode Island.
Maine had the lowest migration interest in the fourth quarter of 2022 with a lead delta of minus 48.9%, according to the report.
New Hampshire was second in New England and 13th in the nation with a lead delta of 20%. Connecticut was 15.3%, followed by Massachusetts at minus 4.9% and Vermont at minus 38.9%.
The full report can be found here.
Hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but if you have looked at the weather conditions over the past couple of years, the Northeast has had the most favorable weather conditions compared to the rest of the continental U.S.
While the rest of the lower 48 has battled record breaking blizzards, rainstorms, flooding, forest fires brought on by severe drought, extreme heat and cold, hurricanes and tornadoes, weather in the Northeast has remained fairly stable and uneventful.
Perhaps folks are slowly realizing that it doesn’t make sense to live where you are constantly battling the weather.
Luckily when one looks into the methodology used by rent.com and dive deep into some reason why people are searching to move to Rhode Island reveals that weather was low on the list of reasons folks were interested in moving here. Quality of life (weather was a subset of this), current political atmosphere and exposer to job and educational opportunities were the main drivers in these decisions. Blizzards in the Midwest and heat in the south were extremely small reasons for this result.