More people moved out of Howard County to nearby counties and states than moved in over the past few years, a trend that local and state planners think may be the result of sharply rising home prices earlier this decade.
The total county population is still growing, though more slowly, according to a draft report by county planner Jeff Bronow. About two-thirds of the growth since 2000 is from births, while just over a quarter is from international migration, and 11.7 percent is from people moving into Howard.
From a high of 5,496 more residents from all sources between April 2000 and April 2001, Howard's growth slowed to a low of 2,218 between 2004 and 2005, when home prices had typically doubled or more. Annual population growth has remained under 3,000 since 2003, Bronow said.
"It's true prices have gone up everywhere in the region, but more in Howard County," Bronow said. The effects of the more recent recession will emerge after this summer's estimates are examined and after the U.S. Census is done April 1, 2010.
The trend appears sharper when the three categories of population growth are examined individually.
"It is clear that while the increases due to natural population growth and international migration have remained relatively constant from 2000 to 2008, internal migration has slowed considerably," Bronow wrote.
In four of the five years since 2003, more people left the county - from 380 to 630, depending on the year - than came to Howard, the report showed.
Mark Goldstein, a state planning department economist who prepared a similar statewide report covering July 2007 to July 2008, noted the same trend in Howard, though the county still grew faster than any other jurisdiction in the Baltimore metropolitan area in that year and was second-fastest in the state, behind Montgomery County.
"High housing costs are probably a significant factor," he said.
"If you look at the pattern of migration, it is always from the higher-priced county to the lower-priced county," he said. Thus people from Howard might move to Carroll or Frederick, and people from those two places might go farther out or to Pennsylvania.
While there are no hard survey numbers showing exactly why people move, Goldstein said often younger families move to buy a larger house or a larger lot in a more-remote county where prices are lower.
Retirees are also part of the mix, Bronow said.
