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