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With more people telecommuting than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that the allure of cramped, expensive urban housing, poo-covered sidewalks and homeless people shooting up in Starbucks has worn off.

According to online real estate company Zillow, there is a mass exodus of people looking to get out of San Francisco real estate – as the housing market is on fire in the Bay Area suburbs, all the way to Lake Tahoe.

According to the company’s “2020 Urban-Suburban Market Report,” home prices in the city have fallen 4.9% year-over-year, while inventory has jumped 96% during the same period, as a flood of new listings hit the market. Zillow notes that they aren’t seeing the same trend in cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. or Seattle.

Via Zillow:

When comparing the principal city to its surrounding suburbs, the San Francisco metro area does break the mold. Higher levels of inventory, up 96% YoY following a flood of new listings during the pandemic, are sitting on the market in the city proper, a significantly larger jump than the surrounding suburbs. Whereas in similar cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., declining or flat inventory is a consistent trend within and outside the city limits. Relatively higher inventory has different causes by city, and is not clearly attributable to either supply or demand. In San Francisco, though, the softening is clear as sellers inundate the market and buyers have not changed their pace to match — newly pending sales in the city are up only 1.7% YoY. 

Meanwhile, both urban and suburban markets nationally are seeing homes sell more quickly than they were in February, while “most areas have seen price cuts decelerate relative to February, and slightly more so in the suburbs,” according to the report.

That said, Zillow is seeing about the same percentage of people searching for urban vs. suburban listings YoY, which would suggest that at least as of June, the ongoing BLM protests which have turned urban cities into Escape From [insert your city here].