I’m the one who said that. I guess I was off (or not). Below is what NAR says. It might be higher for California and the larger metropolitan areas. Interesting that Prop 13 doesn’t have much effect in discouraging people from selling/moving.
Look at zillow.com or sdlookup.com and you’ll see that the majority of properties had sales in a least 5-year intervals.
—————— http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/14843.html
The National Association of REALTORS has found that people move once every seven years on average. When asked in the “Coldwell Banker 2006 Homeownership in America Survey” for reasons why they move, 48 percent of respondents indicated they moved because of their career, 45 percent cited a better community lifestyle and 27 percent cited a new relationship / marriage. Of note, women are more apt to move for a relationship than men, at 53 percent as opposed to 37 percent, respectively.
——————– http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/394786.html
Today, with advanced technological means at our disposal, we change our residence, on average, once every five years—more often than any other culture except nomadic tribes, although in line with our ancestors. In an average year, almost one out of five Americans moves. More than a third of these move to a different county. Roughly 3 percent of Americans move to a new state. That may not sound like much, but that’s in a single year, and over time these moves add up. Few Americans spend their lives in the same city or town, and almost none stay in the same house, street, or neighborhood. In a typical five-year period, only about half the population (53 percent) is living in the same place at the end as at the beginning. Another 2 percent of the population has moved here from abroad, leaving 45 percent who have moved within the United States. Of these internal migrants, almost half, 21 percent of the total, have stayed in the same metropolitan area: they’ve moved from Queens to Manhattan, or Manhattan to Westchester. But that still leaves 24 percent of the total who may have moved long distances—in just five years. At least 5 percent—one person in twenty—moved very long distances, since this is roughly the number who migrated from one of the four major regions (Northeast, North Central, South, and West) to another.
This is a lot of movement. In a typical year, while 20 percent of Americans move, only 4 percent of Dutch citizens do. Rates are 4 percent in Germany, 8 percent in the United Kingdom, 10 percent in France and Japan. In a less developed country like Thailand, only 12 percent of the population move in a five-year period, barely a quarter of the rate in the United States. Only Canada and Australia, also popular destinations for international migration, have levels of internal migration close to those in the United States.
Not all Americans are equally likely to move. Regions of the United States, for example, vary somewhat: in the Northeast only 38 percent of the population move in those five years, but in the West, 57 percent do (the North Central figure is 45 percent, and for the South, 49 percent.) The restless still look west, as they have throughout American history. They may eye Oregon or Idaho instead of California—or after trying California—but they’re still ready to move around until they get it right.
Younger people are more likely to move than older ones. Nearly 40 percent of Americans age 20-24 move in a given year, as do more than 30 percent of those in their late twenties. For internal migration, as for international immigration, moving is associated with finding work. For those over 65, fewer than 6 percent move in any given year: many start new lives in Florida or Arizona and then stay put. Blacks and Latinos are a little more mobile than whites, largely because they are somewhat younger overall. Another big but unsurprising difference is between those who rent and those who own their homes: renters are more than three times as likely to move (one-third of them move in a given year). Men are only slightly more likely to move than women (perhaps because so many men and women move together).
The propensity to move is not affected much by family size or income. Young, unmarried people are not the only ones on the move: 18 percent of single-person households move in a given year, but so do 18 percent of households with seven or more people! Wealthier people are only slightly less likely to move in any year: 12 percent of those making over $100,000 a year move, compared to 17 percent of those making under $30,000. Nor does education matter much. (Education makes more of a difference for the kind of move, with college graduates going greater distances.) Everyone, it seems, is on the move. Like immigration, geographic mobility has been a constant in American history.
