Where St Louis Area Homeowners Are Moving

By Dennis Norman, on May 17th, 2018

The St Louis metro area has seen some population growth over the last few decades but not nearly as much as many other areas. From 1975 until last year, the population of the St Louis MSA increased 12.3% from 2,500,100 in 1975 to 2,807,338 in 2017. Of the major counties in Missouri that make up the St Louis MSA, St Charles County gained the most population increasing 248% during the same period. As the table below shows, 4 of the 5 major counties covered saw an increase in population from 1975 to 2017, although St Louis County’s increase was a rather lackluster 3.3%. Even St Louis County’s modest increase looks good when compared with the city of St Louis that lost 40% of its population during the period.

City of St Louis’ loss is St Charles County gain…

As the table below illustrates, St Charles County gained 281,700 people from 1975 through 2017 while the city of St Louis lost 205,474. Granted, not everyone that left the city of St Louis moved to St Charles County, but there is a lot of “shuffling of the population” that occurs here with movement from one area to another within St Louis as the population shifts. As a result, we end up with things such as the triple-digit increase in population in St Charles County and the city of St Louis losing nearly half of its population, while the overall metro area just had a modest gain.

How we compare to others…

To see how St Louis fared with other similar-sized areas, I checked the population history for the Davidson County Tennessee (Nashville) and Mecklenburg County North Carolina (Charlotte). Below is what I found:

Davidson County TN – 49.5% population growth from 1975 to 2017 increasing from 462,600 to 691,243.
Mecklenburg County NC – 185% population growth during the same period increasing from 377,400 to 1,076,837

So, while smaller, St Charles, Jefferson, and Franklin County’s population growth outpaced Davidson County and just St Charles County managed to outperform Mecklenburg County.

In the coming days, I’ll take a look at how population change has affected home prices and sales.

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