Americans rebounded from a weak holiday season and stepped up spending on retail goods in January. The latest government report on retail sales pointed to a slowly improving economy. Retail sales rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.Would-be movers are leery. After all, we are in a recession.
A few years ago, homeowners considering relocation – especially for a new job – might have snapped up a house in another market.
Today, there’s more apprehension at making such a leap if it means risking the possibility of two mortgages.
“It’s scarier for people to take that risk now, knowing what the market’s been,” said Susan Stoneburner, owner at Colen Moving & Storage in Fort Wayne.
Movers used to commonly work with people who simply had a “For Sale” sign on their house. Stoneburner, who has worked in the moving industry since 1992, said she’s now “seeing a lot more sold signs” when clients call for services.
Sinking home prices and a weak job market have forced normally restless Americans to stay put in an uncharacteristic shift that has, among other things, clobbered the moving industry.
“Property values have dropped so much, people can’t pick up and move the way they used to,” said Michael Hicks, a demographer at Ball State University in Indiana who has tracked the nationwide slowdown using data from several sources, including moving companies.
Those industry statistics mirror a Census Bureau report that looked at moves in 2008, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
“The annual migration rate has gone way down to historic low levels,” Frey said. “This includes long-distance moves and moving across town.”
During the 1950s and 1960s, Frey said, as many as 20 percent of Americans moved in any given year. Mobility rates slowed to 15 percent to 16 percent during the 1990s.
But in 2008, only 11.9 percent of Americans moved, he said.
The stay-put trend has hurt moving companies, according to Stephen Weitekamp, president of the California Moving & Storage Association, whose 430 member firms offer full-service relocations.
“There’s nowhere for people to go,” Weitekamp said, adding that the real estate slump has limited crosstown moves, while the weak job market has hurt corporate hiring.
Traditional movers also are getting more competition from self-service options like storage units that are delivered to homes, packed by the occupants and picked up and shipped across town or across country.
Other alternatives to traditional moving companies include online bidding sites like uShip.com. These sites allow people to post an inventory of their belongings and specify dates and locations for pickup and delivery. Buyers can read reviews before choosing among any offered bids.
The summer months are usually the busiest for movers, including Guardian Relocation in Fort Wayne. Joe Mowery, general manager of the company, which is an Atlas Van Lines agent, said June started off slowly but began to pick up.
“We’re hoping things will be even with last June or a little better,” Mowery said.
Many of those relocating are looking at alternatives to using full-service companies, which can sometimes have more costs associated with labor and packing. But Mowery said the alternatives aren’t always cheaper.
Guardian, which also specializes in moving people in the military, has 20 to 25 on staff. Despite sluggishness in the local relocation market, Mowery said the company has been able to maintain its workforce in the recession and also added some college students as summer help.
At Two Men and a Truck, the Fort Wayne franchise for a company with more than 200 U.S. moving operations, sales associate Andy Walker said business is down about 30 percent from last year.
But one increase Two Men and a Truck has seen is in out-of-state moves.
“I’m seeing a 50 percent growth in interstate moves,” Walker said. “We make the joke around here ‘Nobody wants to live in Indiana.’ ”
Many of those relocating are staying with the same company or have lost a job and are moving because of that, Walker said. With the recession, though, companies are less generous with relocation packages – if they’re paying at all.
Walker pointed out that in most markets, there’s already a pool of workers a company could hire from, so it doesn’t have to pay relocation expenses for an employee who wants to keep a job by accepting a move.
“There’s plenty of willing people qualified to work in that marketplace,” Walker said.
Stoneburner at Colen Moving has noticed the same trend.
“Yes, corporate America has pulled back the reins on what they’re giving people,” she said.
The San Francisco Chronicle contributed to this story.
