A Descriptive Study of Covid-Era Movers to the Northern Forest Region

Key Findings

The natural environment and opportunities for outdoor recreation were the top motivating factors that attracted interviewees to the Northern Forest. 

Most movers interviewed intend to stay in the region permanently. 

While movers did not identify fear of Covid infection as a primary motivator, the pandemic did provide the opportunity for many participants to execute a move they already considered.

The Northern Forest—a 34-county swath of northern Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York—has long attracted tourists for its outdoor recreational amenities¹ (see Figure 1). With a recreation-heavy economy, the region traditionally serves seasonal skiers and hikers with an expansive mix of short-term rentals and second homes.² This combination of rural features and occasional-use housing took on special meaning at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when as early as April 2020, popular media began to report a pattern of urban residents fleeing cities to take refuge from Covid-19 in these amenity-rich rural regions.³ For instance, New Hampshire Public Radio reported that metropolitan residents were “hunkering down” in second homes in northern New England,⁴ and later research confirmed a shift from temporary and seasonal stays to permanent residence changes.⁵

In the intervening years, more data have become available, and it is easier to document the extent of these shifts. The Northern Forest did indeed see an increase in domestic migration in the pandemic era, with 85 percent of the region’s counties experiencing domestic in-migration gains between 2020 and 2021, compared with 63 percent of counties in the rest of the United States. However, the details of these moves remain less documented: who moved to the Northern Forest region, and why? Do they intend to stay? And what does that mean for those who already lived there? This research brief shares findings from interviews with 16 such movers (and six regional real estate agents), conducted in spring 2023 as part of a larger project documenting Covid-era migration in the region. While the project was spurred by the pandemic, findings can support community stakeholders in understanding characteristics of migrants and features that attract them that will be useful in future waves of migration, for instance, in response to climate change or Baby Boomer retirements.⁶ 

For others, however, the enthusiasm for rurality was paired with practical considerations about access to city-based amenities as needed. The region’s reasonable distance from more urban areas like Boston, Portland, or New York City was regularly referenced and important in conjunction with its rural context. One interviewee named “the combination of the rural aspects of it while still having cities that have things to do” as key. 

“I wanted something smaller, where I could actually be part of a community.”

Intertwined with the potential solitude of rural spaces, interviewees also recognized that they had moved to small communities that could foster neighborliness, albeit in ways specific to “the Northeaster[ner] personality.” “There’s definitely a friendliness and people will help out their neighbors, but there’s also a ‘doing your own thing’ [mentality], and you can just kind of be independent and keep to yourself if you like. That’s what we’re looking for.” Others hoped to develop deeper connections with time: “I was looking for a small community where we would be able to get to know people, where you would bump into people that you knew at the grocery store, where you could become a useful part of a group instead of just one more faceless person.” 

At the same time, at least one interviewee sensed some local skepticism about their commitment to the community. “I think people still expect that I’m going to leave. They give me that look like, ‘…here’s a kind of crazy person from the city who’s up in the neighborhood, and he’s not the first one I’ve seen in the past three years.’ There’s kind of that vibe a little bit.” Potential for tension between newcomers and “old-timers” has long been documented in amenity-rich rural regions, especially around priority setting within the community.⁸

Did the pandemic drive migrants to the Northern Forest?

For most interviewees, the pandemic was not a primary driver of their move to the Northern Forest. Very few people explicitly referenced a reduced risk of infection as playing a role in their decision to move. Rather, the pandemic more often functioned as the impetus for a move that interviewees were already considering. For example, half of the interviewees explained that once the pandemic started, their job shifted to remote work, allowing them to “live wherever [they] wanted as long as [they] had a relatively good internet connection.” One participant said they and their spouse “did research for a couple of years” before they purchased their house once they could afford it. Another started “taking some trips” to visit the area in 2018 before moving in mid-2020; “working probably 15-, 16-hour days seven days a week” during the pandemic allowed them to purchase a home with the overtime pay earned. A third participant explained that the pandemic was part of their motivation to be closer to aging family in the region.

“In a way, we’re home…We see ourselves growing old here and being here forever.”

By and large, the movers we interviewed planned to stay in the region for good. Several interviewees said they had been dreaming about living in the Northern Forest for years—including one who “fell in love with the area probably when [they were] two years old” on a family visit. At the other end of the spectrum, one interviewee purchased a house in the Northern Forest region though they had “never even been to New England.” Regardless of how long they considered their relocation, most movers planned to stay in the region forever. “The goal is that this is the forever home, the move to end all moves,” one said. Another insisted, “You’d have to drag us out.” For those who did not intend to stay forever, life course transitions like military duty and college graduation played a role, as did a lack of job opportunities in the region. 

Real estate agents’ perspectives: “I think that most of the people who came here had a relationship here.”

To get a wider perspective on migration into the region in the pandemic-era period, we also interviewed six Northern Forest real estate agents. Agents were asked to describe their sense of Northern Forest home buyers and desirable real estate features in the early period of the pandemic. Across the board, agents suggested that the housing market had intensified during the pandemic, although Covid was not the only driver. One Maine real estate agent described, “There were a lot of people who came from the cities and fled here to get away from the pandemic in the beginning.” A Vermont counterpart had a similar experience, noting “We had a large population of first-time home buyers. We also had a huge wave of folks coming over from out-of-state, particularly from New York…I feel like people who had families definitely wanted to get out of there. A lot of the people from New York were families, young professionals.” 

There was a sense among real estate agents that movers did not select the Northern Forest region at random. One agent noted, “I think that most of the people who came here had a relationship here. Either they had vacationed here or they had a family house here…there was some sort of connection to this area.” For others, Covid-era migration was part of a broader context of migration into the region. A New York agent commented, “We call them climate refugees…people coming from the West Coast are escaping drought and forest fires and smoke and that kind of stuff.” In the pandemic context of growing remote work, however, “one of the first questions out of their mouths was ‘is there high-speed internet?’” In addition, many of the real estate agents’ observations overlapped with what movers described—for example, that migrants were attracted to the natural beauty of the area.

Quantifying higher-income movers

The real estate agents we interviewed also identified some potentially worrisome impacts connected to the recent wave of migration. In particular, interviewees pointed to skyrocketing home prices connected to a broader context of demand, particularly among high-income movers. “That house that used to be $180,000 that Joe Blow Local could buy is now $300,000 or $400,000. That’s a big, huge jump. Now for the summer person who’s buying it, that’s nothing. They buy it and they fix it up…That obviously is having a negative impact on affordable housing.” In addition, movers who purchased a second home without selling their prior residence were identified as exacerbating a broader lack of real estate inventory.