Market Overview

The relocation support service market size for FY2020, based on the sales at the businesses, is expected to decline by 20.6% from the previous fiscal year to 9,336 million yen. Of the three targeted categories, U/I/J-turn job-change support services that occupy most of the entire market size, diminished due to decreased recruitment in the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing the whole market size.

After the breakout of COVID-19, telework has spread to make people working at urban enterprises easier to relocate themselves to the countryside while retaining their jobs. As the annoying concerns over relocations to rural areas, such as lower income or difficulties in obtaining ideal jobs, becoming alleviated, more people regardless of their ages have started considering moving to other regions than before the pandemic. In addition, many of various relocation support services offered by service providers in this research tended to be positioned as regional revitalization business that values vitalization of local communities rather than pursuing profitability. Because of such characteristics of the business, promotions by the Cabinet Office, each governmental offices and local governments have boosted the demand for relocation support services.
* U-turn job change is the case of a person who grew up in the countryside, moved to the big cities for work, but eventually decided to return to their hometown area. I-turn job change is the case of a person who grew up in the urban area and moved to countryside for work. Finally, J-turn job change is the case of a person who was raised in the countryside, moved to the big cities for work, but moved to the countryside different from their hometown area.

Noteworthy Topics

Increasing Attention to Living in Rural Areas against the Backdrop of COVID-19 Pandemic

After COVID-19 pandemic, users of nationwide vacant-house bank websites extremely increased, shown by 1.5 to 2 times larger pageviews per month, or two times larger number of unique users than last year, respectively.

When examined the search volume for the keyword “relocation to countryside” at major search engines during January 2014 to April 2021, the volume showed gradual uptrends with minute ups and downs from FY2015 to FY2019, but it has sharply increased since around April 2020 when COVID-19 infections started expansion.

While people’s interest to live in the countryside was already rising as a result of various efforts for regional invigoration both by local governments and private sector in recent years, drastic social changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have spurred further attention.

Future Outlook

The relocation support service market size for FY2021, based on the sales at the businesses, is expected to rise by 15.4% from the previous fiscal year to 10,770 million yen.

When observing by target category, U/I/J-turn job-change support services have shown gradual recovery, as recruitment in the job market has started reviving after sharp drop at the beginning of the COVIS-19 infections. U/I/J-turn job-change support services are expected to continue the recovery in accordance with the growing intentions to recruit more.at the job market.

The category of vacant-house banks is likely to grow stably, as more people started considering living away from Tokyo metropolitan areas to avert the closeness, and as spread of remote work increased the opportunities to reconsider workstyles that do not limit where they live, which raised more attention to real estate agencies in the countryside.

The category of multiple-residence services has reduced the users temporarily as traffic of people declined and as telework spread when the state of emergency was announced. Nevertheless, multiple-residence services have attracted attention after accommodation businesses including hotels and real estate agencies entered the market and as the services have been regarded as useful for finding a location for telework. Therefore, the market of multiple-residence services have shown recovery since the latter half of FY2020, and it is likely to continue being on the rise hereafter.

Research Outline