There has been a lot written about the “new normal” and how things have evolved very quickly. One experience grows into a story and that story becomes fact. It is like having 100 white marbles placed in front of you, except one is red. The eye is automatically drawn to the red marble, and this appears to be the pandemic experience and narrative. One of those “Covid-19 Facts” is that people are now choosing to leave their current address and move to the coast because it is now acceptable to work from home. If you can work from home, you can work from anywhere right? The urban myth begins.

Let’s think about this logically.

The Covid-19 pandemic became highly problematic in March forcing shutdowns and school closures. People started to work from home and technology that was available to everyone pre-pandemic was now starting to be utilized. Why is the timing important and why do we have the SEQ Population graph above? The timing is critical for a number of reasons and graph is relevant because it highlights the life stages of the population. So why is it really unlikely that the lifestyle migration would occur in any large volume?

1. Very few families are reluctant to take their children out of school mid-year (March-September) and move to a completely different location during the best of circumstances, let alone during a global pandemic. For many children and young adults, this has been a highly challenging period. The graph above shows just how much of the population is weighted to the Family Formation and Education based age cohorts. To move a whole family during the middle of a pandemic is most unlikely for a large portion of the population. Previous research has identified that circa 20% of parents will extend their mortgage to help fund their child’s education. That is how important education is in modern day life.

2. Historical data tells us that the population is typically at its most mobile from 25-29 years of age. Whether this is moving out of home, moving for work or simply changing property because you can get a better rental rate somewhere else. It is also the nesting age where starting a family becomes a consideration and buying a home to settle down into is of greater consideration. The big issue for this demographic is that when the economy contracted so quickly into recession, it was this demographic that lost their jobs and sometimes rebounded back to live with their parents.

The question has to be asked, if this demographic is concerned about losing their job and their future becomes less clear, are they more likely to move away from a key economic centre for “lifestyle” reasons or stay where the job opportunities are greatest? Cities and metropolitan areas create employment opportunities better than almost any other location.

3. So not only do we have the most mobile cohort feeling rightfully concerned about their employment opportunities and future, the coastal regions were the worst hit in terms of economic suffering from closed State and International borders. Employment opportunities in these regions are only just starting to show some signs of improvement, though are highly reliant on school holidays and local markets. Young people would have to be very confident to move from one region to another and buy a property, particularly given that many white collar roles actually went to reduced hours…and these were the industry types that could work from home.

4. Another key indicator that should have set off alarm bells around the concept of increased internal migration being improbable is the reduced volume of houses that were on the market. If there are less established houses on the market, it is difficult to see people moving en-masse to another location and not selling the property they currently reside in. Less house sales, less mobility.

5. In times of uncertainty, people become more resistant to change and therefore less likely to move. Harvard Business School undertook a study of what makes people resistant to change and listed these attributes amongst others;

a. Loss of control. When government tells you what you can do, when you can do it and for how long, individual autonomy is lost. Hardly the conditions to pack everyone up and move.

b. Excess uncertainty. There is always some level of uncertainty in our daily lives. Though that level of uncertainty in normal daily lives for most extends around simple things like whether a bus runs on time, what is the price of fuel etc. However excess uncertainty or heightened uncertainty was created in big ticket items like the economy, the recession, have I got Covid-19 and all I see on the TV is a daily body count. Excess uncertainty creates the preconditions that relate to the expression “Better the devil you know…” Up and moving only adds to the personal risk, real or imagined.

c. Being surprised and having little time to adjust. In many respects this sums up the current scenario perfectly. The rate of escalation in the virus has caught people out and impacted their daily lives.

d. Sometimes the threat is real. As real as that threat is, it is even worse when you can’t see it.

6. If people weren’t stressed enough because of the pandemic, a study undertaken in Britain of 2,000 people found that moving house was in fact more stressful than a divorce or relationship break up. It was ranked number one as the most stressful thing to do. Other studies have it ranked in the top five. One would have to think that most people have not been thinking about how they can relocate to a completely new region, miles away from their principle place of employment during a period of heightened stress. It makes no sense; yet the urban myth still gets perpetuated.

And if rationale used above is not enough to shift any information bias, then the data below should help you realise that the urban myth of moving to greener (coastal) pastures is actually not real. If you’re a developer, you’re not missing out on a market. If you’re an office bound worker, it would seem the vast majority of you aren’t missing out either.

The data is clear, there is no significant or extraordinary uplift in lifestyle migration by white collar workers or any workers for that matter resulting from a technology driven work from anywhere rationale. There is however a caveat to the current circumstances. When school ends, the recession passes and a hopefully a vaccine is created and distributed, confidence levels will increase. Are these the circumstances that will then make it more likely for people to make a lifestyle move…or will we remain in the neighbourhoods we enjoy, the shops we know and life returns to normal? You know, the normal that wasn’t 2020 or even “new”.

Matthew Gross | Director

Urban myth of Covid-19 technology driven lifestyle migration currently not supported in SEQ

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