When housing search reorganised after 2020, it did so on one margin and not the other. The extensive margin, the share of residents whose search crosses their travel-to-work-area boundary, jumped. The intensive margin, how far those leavers actually look, barely moved. So the pandemic did not bring the “death of distance”: more people searched beyond their own city, but not appreciably farther afield.
The chart carries the two margins as two different marks on two axes, so they are never mistaken for one quantity. The bars, in the lower half, are the intensive margin, the mean distance leavers look, read off the left axis in kilometres and labelled with their value. The lines, in the upper half, are the extensive margin, the share of residents crossing their boundary, read off the right axis in per cent. Sale is shown in blue and rent in purple, so both markets sit in one chart for comparison. The finding is the contrast between the halves: around 2020 to 2021 the bars stay roughly level while the lines climb, so more people crossed the edge but did not look farther. The national sale line falls back by 2025 while the rental line stays high, consistent with renters searching persistently wider under affordability pressure, and individual cities vary (Manchester’s boundary-crossing rose sharply and stayed high). Choose an area to see your own city, and hover any year for its figures. Both axes rescale to the chosen area so the bars fill the lower half and the lines the upper; smaller areas have noisier figures, search signals interest rather than a completed move, and England is the reliable canvas.