Longest and Lowest Commuting Counties

Total population 218,006,356; 67.5% of total U.S. population

The Q4 2020 rollout of the HBGI, in addition to its usual, region-level classification of counties, highlights a new segmentation of the housing market based on counties with an ESRI 2018 Diversity Index Value of 46 and above. The Diversity Index, as constructed by ESRI, represents the likelihood (out of 100) that two persons, chosen at random from the same area, belong to different race or ethnic groups; a higher diversity county consists of a larger grouping of different racial and ethnic groups. U.S. Counties’ Index values roughly assumed a bimodal distribution and it was determined that the Index value of 46 was a suitable cutoff point for the values above and below, thus lending interpretation to “lower diversity” and “higher diversity” counties. We define lower Diversity Counties as having an ESRI Diversity Index of 45 or below and Higher Diversity Counties as having an ESRI 2018 Diversity Index of 46 or above. The 2018 Diversity Index’s value at the National level, that is, of the United States, stands at 64.

We observed the following in Higher Diversity counties:

• 66.7% of single-family construction for 4Q20
• -3.4% single-family quarterly growth rate for the 4Q20
• 26.0% single-family year-over-year growth rate (4Q20 vs 4Q19)
• 14.5% single-family 4-quarter MA of the year-over-year growth rate

In multifamily, the trends in Longest Commuting Counties were:

• 35.6% of multifamily construction for 1Q21
• -9.3% multifamily quarterly growth rate for the 1Q21
• -2.7% multifamily year-over year growth rate (1Q21 vs 1Q20)
• -14.6% multifamily 4-quarter MA of the year-over-year growth rate

And in the Lowest Commuting Counties:

• 4.6% of multifamily construction for 1Q21
• -22.3% multifamily quarterly growth rate for the 1Q21
• 9.6% multifamily year-over year growth rate (1Q21 vs 1Q20)
• 24.2% multifamily 4-quarter MA of the year-over-year growth rate