Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC Has Affordable Living and One of the Fastest Growing Populations

Each year, tens of millions of Americans move to a new area. Historically, a new job or job transfer has accounted for about one in every 10 of those moves, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. However, as remote work becomes an option for a growing number of workers, more Americans are free to prioritize other factors when choosing a place to live — and one of them is cost of living.

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center found that before the pandemic, only 20% of Americans who could work remotely did so. During the pandemic, that figure surged to over 70% — and many of those workers may not be required to return to the office.

As fewer workers are tethered to a physical office, places like New York City and Silicon Valley — employment hubs with nation-leading costs of living — are reporting net population declines. Meanwhile, many cities where the cost of living is relatively low have grown considerably.

Goods and services in the Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC metro area are about 5.6% less expensive than they are on average nationwide. The Charlotte metro area had an estimated net inflow of 11,806 new residents from July 2020 to April 2021 — the ninth most of the 93 metro areas with available migration data and a lower than average cost of living. The number of Americans who moved there in recent months is equal to about 0.4% of the local population.

According to online search data from Redfin, a national real estate brokerage, the interest in real estate in Charlotte is coming more from the New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT-PA metro area than anywhere else. An estimated 22.9% of all online searches for homes in the Charlotte area are from the New York metro area.

All data on population change from net migration and online real estate searches are from Redfin.com, a national real estate brokerage. Data on regional price parity, or cost of living, is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and is for 2019.