New homes help build Rock River Valley populace from '05-09

The last half of the past decade was a positive one for populace growth in Boone and Winnebago counties, which knowledgeable a net increase in migration thanks to a boon of cheap home building in newly developed areas.

New data from the U.S. Census Bureau measuring county-to-county relocation patterns across the country show that, from 2005 to 2009, Boone County saw a net supplement of nearly 1,000 residents, thanks to people moving into the county. Winnebago County inbound and outbound relocation figures were nearly identical in that period, making the inbound and outbound moves a wash.

It’s the first time the Census Bureau has released county-to-county relocation data since the 2000 census.

The survey period includes the Great depression, which officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, but doesn’t catch the worst of the result when unemployment spiked to near-record levels locally. That data, Rockford demographics advisor Joel Cowen said, may tell a much dissimilar tale.

Most moves stay local

“In terms of lodging, those moves became very hard because of the foreclosure situation,” he said. “The value of those homes dropped, people were under irrigated and they didn’t have the assets to pick up and move like they used to.”

Half of Boone County inbound relocation came from people who moved here from Cook or a collar county of Chicago, counting McHenry, Kane and Lake.

Much of the area’s lodging boon at the time came as people in those areas moved west to find larger, cheaper houses than they could buy in the Chicago area.

Most of those families still had one or more adults commuting to the Chicago area, which Cowen said rounded some of the financial impact of the population boon.

“Because these are people with ties to an old position, they probably have a dissimilar parching profile than someone who lives and works in Rockford,” he said. “We tend to be a attractive independent market.”

Escaping to Wisconsin

Fascinatingly, out-of-state moves are a small percentage of outbound relocation for both Boone and Winnebago counties. Wisconsin specifically, Dane, Rock and Milwaukee counties were the biggest purpose for out-of-state movers, according to the census data.

Employment experts predicted that areas of the county with higher unemployment would lose residents to thriving service zones like Texas and the Dakotas. That didn’t seem to occur here through the end of the Great depression.