Number Of Residents Who Left Forest Hills Doubled In 2020: Study

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Nearly two times the amount of people moved out of Forest Hills in 2020 compared to 2019, according to a new study by the global real estate firm CBRE.

The study, which looked at 29 million change-of-address requests filed with the U.S. Postal Service last year provided ZIP code-based insights into which neighborhoods across the country saw the most people leave — and where those residents relocated to.

New York City was already shrinking before 2020, and once it became a national epicenter of the pandemic residents began to flee in droves — more people moved out of New York City than almost any other city in the U.S. last year, second only to San Francisco, the study found.

Many of those who moved headed to Sun Belt cities like Austin and Charlotte, which gained new residents according to the study.

Over 150,000 people moved out of Queens in 2020, a 10 percent increase from the year before, the study found. (However, the study doesn’t include ZIP codes with fewer than 10,000 individuals, so data is missing from some of the borough’s neighborhoods.)

In Forest Hills 11375 ZIP code, 5,359 people moved out in 2020, while 4,247 moved in — a net loss of 1,112 residents, or 8 per 1,000 people.

This smaller exodus matches the study’s findings that most people who moved last year were affluent young adults who had no children and were able to work remotely. By comparison, Forest Hills is known as a family-friendly, almost suburban, neighborhood, and according to census data looking at demographics by ZIP code the neighborhood’s median age is 42 (nearly 10 years older than the median age in Long Island City).

However, while the neighborhood’s net-loss pales in comparison to other parts of the borough — like Astoria and Long Island City, which saw a loss of over 8,000 residents — it’s a nearly 50 percent greater exodus than the previous year, when only 534 people moved away.

The study concludes that this “outflow from urban areas likely will subside as normal life resumes and lower rents lure back some who had moved out,” which appears to be true of New York City: Manhattan rent prices, which fell precipitously during the pandemic exodus, have shown signs of rebounding in recent months, suggesting that demand for urban living has begun to rise again.