Housing Affordability, Jobs Draw Residents to the Inland Empire

The combination of low-cost housing and a job market has finally made the Inland Empire an attractive SoCal market. The Inland Empire has always boasted low-cost housing, but now the job market is rounding out the region and making it a more attractive place to live. As a result, the Inland Empire is seeing significant population growth, and it is expected to evolve rapidly in the coming years.

“Affordability has always been a draw, but without a strong job market, potential residents would have been reluctant to leave a market like Los Angeles. Since 2010, one out of every four jobs added in Southern California went to the Inland Empire,” Matt Kaufman, research analyst at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. “For context, the Inland Empire only makes up one-fifth of the regional population, showing how much the region is outpacing its neighbors.  Initially, much of that growth was the result of e-commerce but has since grown and diversified to absorb a variety of job sectors including healthcare and education. With this strong and diverse of a job market, people are feeling more confident in their ability to find work outside of Los Angeles and are feeling more emboldened to leave for a more affordable market.”

The majority of the new residents in the Inland Empire market are likely homebuyers, rather than renters. These residents are coming from other, more expensive markets in Southern California, where homeownership was unattainable. “We cannot tell for certain, but it is reasonable to assume that these new residents would be homebuyers, or at least could be in the next few years,” says Kaufman. “The cost of homeownership in Los Angeles has priced many potential homeowners out of the market and has only helped boost local demand for multifamily units in lieu of single-family homes. It would stand to reason, that as we continue to see people migrate from Los Angeles toward the Inland Empire, many are doing so with the intention of keeping their home-owning aspirations alive.”