Just under a third (30%) of Americans said that protests in major cities have made them want to move away from where they currently live, or have changed where they want to move to, according to an October Redfin survey of more than 3,000 U.S. residents.
Meanwhile, nearly half (47%) of participants said that protests have had no impact on their feelings about where they live, and almost a quarter (23%) said that such events have made them like where they live more.
“Americans have been leaving major cities in droves during the pandemic, and recent unrest is just one small piece of the puzzle,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “For some families, the protests, curfews and looting that have taken place in 2020 may have played a role in the decision to leave big-city life behind, but remote work and record-low mortgage rates were likely the driving factors.”
In the late spring of 2020, mass protests broke out in cities across America after a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man. The unrest lasted for weeks in some places, including Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the six-block center of the protests became nationally known as the CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized/Occupied Protest).
“Seattle’s condo market has really struggled in general during the pandemic, but the units that are closest to the CHOP have typically been selling even more slowly than other condos in Capitol Hill,” said local Redfin real estate agent Forrest Moody. “I had one listing that was a block away from the CHOP and across the street from a Ferrari dealership that had its windows smashed. The condo actually sold within five days, but that’s likely because we listed it for $25,000 less than we had planned to back in February.”
In Kenosha, WI, home touring slowed after the Aug. 23, 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake set off protests downtown, but the city’s housing market has mostly returned to normal, according to local Redfin real estate agent Melissa Killham.
“The protests impacted the market for a few weeks. I heard about a couple of buyers a month ago who realized they wanted to get out of downtown Kenosha because of the unrest,” Killham said. “But now things have died down and you just don’t hear about it as much anymore.”
When broken down by location, respondents living in urban areas were the most likely to say that protests in major cities have made them want to live somewhere else. More than a third (34%) of participants residing in urban areas indicated that protests have made them want to move away from where they currently live, or have changed where they want to move to. That compares with 26% of participants living in suburban areas.
Meanwhile, 28% of respondents living in rural areas said that protests have made them like where they live more, compared with 24% of participants living in suburban areas, and 20% of participants living in urban areas.
When broken down by which candidate respondents said they intended to vote for, Trump voters were more likely to say that protests have impacted where they want to live. Of the survey participants who indicated that they planned to vote for Trump, 39% said that protests in major cities have made them want to move away from where they currently live, or have changed where they want to move to. That compares with about a quarter (23%) of participants who indicated that they planned to vote for Biden.
Redfin surveyed over 3,000 U.S. residents aged 18 and up between Oct. 7, 2020 and Oct. 15, 2020. The demographics of the survey sample were on par with U.S. Census breakdowns for age, gender, race, and geography in order to match the makeup of the general population as closely as possible. In addition to the question quoted in the above charts, respondents were asked who they planned to vote for in the 2020 U.S. presidential election (Biden led in our survey 49% to 43%).
