Longest and Lowest Commuting Counties
Total population of the Longest Commuting counties: 117 million (36.2% of the total U.S. population)
Total population of the Lowest Commuting counties: 16 million (5.0% of the total U.S. population)
The Q1 2021 rollout of the HBGI, in addition to its usual, Region-level classification of counties, features a new segmentation of the housing market based on counties’ mean commuting times to workers’ places of employment, based on reported findings from the 2018 5-year American Community Survey. We segment the housing market into five submarkets, each representing an approximate quintile of the counties’ mean commute times:
- 28 minutes or more: Longest Commute Time
- 24-28 minutes: Higher Commute Time
- 22-24 minutes: Medium Commute Time
- 18-22 minutes: Lesser Commute Time
- 18 minutes or less: Lowest Commute Time
The HBGI’s foray into commuting-related data this quarter also features delineations of the housing market based on calculated work-from-home percentages and bicycle commuting percentages, also derived from the 2018 5-year American Community Survey. Those results can be viewed in the HBGI data supplement.
We observed the following in the Longest Commuting counties:
- 31.6% of single-family construction for 1Q21
- 5.1% single-family quarterly growth rate for the 1Q21
- 25.7% single-family year-over-year growth rate (1Q21 vs 1Q20)
- 17.4% single-family 4-quarter MA of the year-over-year growth rate
And in the Lowest Commuting counties:
- 4.3% of single-family construction for 1Q21
- -2.8% single-family quarterly growth rate for the 1Q21
- 34.4% single-family year-over-year growth rate (1Q21 vs 1Q20)
- 22.2% 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