Amazon: Here’s Where Seattleites Are Already Looking to Move

Amazon: Here’s Where Seattleites Are Already Looking to Move

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Updated on October 3rd, 2020

Amazon announced the 20 finalist cities vying to host a second headquarters for the tech giant.

Wherever HQ2 splashes down, the highly paid tech workers it will transplant and attract are likely to make waves in the local housing market.

Amazon’s move is going to add momentum to a trend we expect to intensify in 2018 in which people are moving from expensive West Coast markets to smaller, more affordable inland cities. In a recent interview with CNBC, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman pointed out that American talent is moving inward, and companies like Amazon have no choice but to follow.

To help narrow down the list, we ranked the top 10 HQ2 candidates Seattleites are already moving to based on the portion of Seattle-based Redfin.com users searching for homes outside Seattle in each metro area:

Rank City % of Seattle-Based Users Searching for Homes in Destination
1 Los Angeles 4.64%
2 Chicago 2.88%
3 Austin 2.26%
4 Dallas 1.14%
5 Denver 1.10%
6 Pittsburgh 0.84%
7 Atlanta 0.75%
8 Washington, D.C. 0.60%
9 Philadelphia 0.52%
9 Raleigh 0.52%

Los Angeles, Chicago and Austin topped our list of cities that Seattle residents might move to in the coming months. Cities not listed in the top 10 above consisted of less than .5 percent of searches coming from Seattle.

Wherever HQ2 lands, it is likely to have a big impact on the housing and job markets in the local community.

“We are going to see both businesses and people move to places that are more affordable,” said Kelman. “And it’s going to be good for the country…It’ll depolarize us politically and it’ll balance things out financially.”

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Greg McCarriston

Greg studied literature in writing at the University of Arizona and has spent a decade writing for a variety of brands and exploring life in America’s big cities. Before Redfin, Greg was a data journalist in the market research industry, writing about cultural trends, climate change, and politics. His dream home would be a viking hall in the mountains of Vermont, with a zipline back to Brooklyn.

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