This just in: more proof that the 2020 narrative of a fading New York City was completely wrong.
NYC saw its population grow by 8% in the past decade, according to Census Bureau data released earlier this week. That's equivalent to more than 629,000 people for a population of 8.8 million.
It's positive news for a city whose obituary was written countless times last year. Formerly the US epicenter of the pandemic during the first coronavirus wave last spring, NYC watched many of its young professional transplants head back to their parents' homes and its wealthy residents flee upstate or down south for more space. The urban flight fueled the story of a city that had lost its luster.
City officials have partially attributed the population increase to getting a better census count after the New York's Department of City planning added 265,000 housing units that were missing from the Bureau's list. But it's still the latest evidence that the NYC mass exodus wasn't quite so massive as it was made out to be.
Data from USPS released earlier found that more Manhattanites moved to Brooklyn than anywhere else between March 2020 and February 2021 — 20,000 of them, compared with 19,000 Manhattanites who moved to Florida, only 10,000 of whom plan to stay permanently.
While the number of outward migrants from the NYC metro area ticked up from 2019 to 2020 — a loss of 6.6 per 1,000 residents grew to 10.9 — those who left for the suburbs were already returning in spring, Mansion Global reported. People began their return to NYC in the third quarter of 2020, location data from Unacast found. In January and February, it said, migration to the city was growing twice as fast as it did in 2019.
The city's real estate market, which once plummeted, has since begun to rebound. New Yorkers are upgrading to wealthier neighborhoods and fancier apartments, while there's evidence that overseas buyers are starting to drive sales again, as are young professionals looking to buy for the first time. The number of sales in Manhattan increased by 28.7% from the last three months of 2020 to the first three of 2021, according to a Douglas Elliman report.
A Bank of America Research note from May predicted that economic reopening would further spark a domino-like return to the city, ultimately proving the mass exodus narrative more myth than reality. It noted that NYC remained a premier city for "young renters given their status as economic, financial, and cultural centers, and the pullback in rents over the past year helps affordability."
Now, not everyone has stuck around. The same USPS data found many did move for good. But those who didn't stay in the metro area still remained close by in the Northeast, heading out east to Long Island or as far as Philadelphia. Within traveling distance to the city, it's likely they'll continue to boost NYC's economy, but through spending as visitors rather than as residents.
But Stephan D. Whitaker, an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said that while migration did increase in many urban neighborhoods, it hasn't been to the extent that it would fit the definition of an exodus.
As Kenneth Horn, the founder of Alchemy Properties, told Mansion Global, "Whoever wrote off New York was wrong."
