Philadelphia is a tight knit city, with residents sharing neighborly bonds that go back generations. But as the City of Brotherly Love, the historic city opens newcomers with open arms (as long as they root for the Eagles).
Here at SpareFoot, we were curious to see where new Philadelphians are coming from so we took a deep dive into some recent census data to find out.
Moving to Philadelphia
We examined data from 2009-2013 that shows county to county migration patterns across the United States.
Looking at inbound migration to Philadelphia County, we found that 57,848 people moved to the county during a five year period. The majority of arrivals came from out of state–more than 58.5 percent. The other 41.5 percent moved to Philly from another county in Pennsylvania, primarily from the adjacent counties of Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks and Chester.
For out-of-state movers, these are the most common counties of origin:
- Camden County, NJ
- Burlington County, NJ
- Kings County, NY (Brooklyn)
- New York County, NY (Manhattan)
- Washington D.C.
- Mercer County, NJ
- New Castle, DE
- Gloucester County, NJ
- Monmouth County, NJ
- Cook County, IL
Current Trends
All that movement generates demand for local self-storage facilities.
SpareFoot looked at our own data to see where people are moving to the Philadelphia metro area from currently.
To compile our list, we looked at the number of Sparefoot.com searchers for storage in the Philadelphia metro area from April 2015 through April 2016. We also found the top ten places those searches originated from.
Based on our data, most people looking to move to Philadelphia aren’t traveling very far. The top two places people are searching for Philadelphia storage from are Washington-Baltimore and New York-Northern New Jersey, each making up just under 40 percent of volume among the top ten.
Below are the top ten metro areas where people are searching for storage in Philadelphia, along with the percent share of searchers among the top 10:
| Washington-Baltimore DC-MD-VA-WV | 39.4% |
| New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island | 38.8% |
| Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton PA | 4.5% |
| Boston-Worcester-Lawrence MA-NH-ME-CT | 4% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose CA | 3.2% |
| Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County | 2.8% |
| Detroit-Ann Arbor-Flint MI | 1.9% |
| Chicago-Gary-Kenosha IL-IN-WI | 1.9% |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale FL | 1.8% |
| Atlanta GA | 1.7% |
We believe that storage searches made from one city for storage space in another city likely indicates intent to relocate to that city.
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