How did COVID-19 affect people's housing preferences?

This project examines how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the real estate market by causing a shift in property demand from tier 1 cities to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. I hypothesize that with the enforcement of stay at home orders and closure of social facilities, people were no longer attracted to big and expensive cities. They therefore moved to other cities that had homes with larger spaces suitable for social distancing and work from home arrangements. My analysis looks at San Francisco (tier 1), San Diego(tier 2) and Irvine (tier 3) classified as so based on population density. In conclusion, I found that tier 1 city had the hottest real estate market before the pandemic but coldest months after the pandemic. Tier 3 city's market was the coldest before the pandemic but hottest after the pandemic. However, the original trend before the pandemic seems to come back as we examine months after the pandemic when people started going back to in person life activites.