Worcester residents look to Boston, but Boston looks to Providence
Photo | Grant Welker
Roughly half of those looking to move to the Worcester metropolitan area from outside Central Massachusetts are from Greater Boston, according to a Realtor.com report. Worcester-area residents are most likely to look at Boston-area listings.
No sure way exists of tracking how many people are moving to Worcester from the Boston area, or vice versa.
But one report does give a sense: Realtor.com's tracking of where residents are looking to move and where they move from, using data from the first quarter of the year.
The results? The Boston metro area gets by far the most looks from Worcester-area residents looking to leave Central Massachusetts, with 22.0% of all searches. The Providence area is second at 7.7%, with the Hartford, Barnstable, Norwich/New London, Conn., and Portland, Maine, areas following.
Boston, though, looks primarily to Providence. The Rhode Island capital takes up 11.0% of Boston-area searches. Worcester is second at 8.4%, followed by Portland at 6.9%. Boston-area residents are more likely to look more broadly for a new home, and it's less likely to be in Central Massachusetts.
It's not hard to see why people would be looking to move in or out of Greater Boston, with the area providing so many high-paying jobs but also coming with home prices and rents that are unreachable for many.
Through July, Worcester County home prices have averaged $285,000, compared to $578,000 in Boston's Suffolk County, or $565,000 in Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge, Newton and other expensive suburbs, as well as much of MetroWest. Still, the Boston region has been growing at a far faster clip, at 6.2%, or 284,129 people, from 2010 to 2018, according to Census estimates. The Worcester area has grown by 3.4%, or 31,064 people, in that time.
Other takeaways from Realtor.com's new report:
— The Worcester area gets nearly as many out-of-state listing views as Greater Boston, at 21.9% and 22.5% of their total views respectively, in what seems to be a sign that it isn't just Boston that's attracting people from out of the area to live. (Portland gets a far larger share of out-of-state inquiries, at 53.8%, one of the highest in the country, with one-third coming from Boston and another 9.1% from New York.)
— When Worcester-area residents are looking to leave Central Massachusetts, it's most likely they're looking toward Boston. Greater Boston made up 48.7% of searches, compared to 8.2% for the New York area, 7.5% for Providence and 5.7% for Hartford.
— Many residents aren't looking to go far. Of those considering a move to the Worcester area, 46.8% of listing views are from within the metro area, and another 30.7% from within Massachusetts. When Worcester-area residents are looking to move, eight of the top 10 most common destinations are within New England, accounting for 53.8% of those searches. The other two are both in Florida, the Tampa Bay region and Greater Miami.
— Worcester isn't the only New England area where residents have an eye on Boston. While 22.0% of Worcester-area searches were for the Boston area, the number was 30.6% in Manchester, N.H., 20.4% in Providence, and 12.3% in Portland. The numbers drop after that, with Hartford residents most likely to look to New Haven, for example, and Springfield residents most likely to look to Hartford.
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