REDFIN SEES BIG CITIES SUFFERING AS REMOTE WORK DRIVES MIGRATION ELSEWHERE
“The whole narrative of the past 200 years, of the young person moving to the big city, may turn a little upside down in the years ahead.”
The sudden shift to remote work, brought on by the coronavirus shutdowns will accelerate a major migration away from expensive coastal cities. According to a new survey of homebuyers and sellers from Redfin, 1 in 4 newly-remote workers expect to continue to work remotely once shutdowns end, and over half of respondents would move if they never had to go into an office.
“Redfin is preparing for a seismic demographic shift toward smaller cities,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. “Prior to this pandemic, the housing affordability crisis was already driving people from large cities to small. Now, more permissive policies around remote work, and a rising wariness about close quarters, will likely accelerate that trend. We expect to see more people commuting once a week from Sacramento to San Francisco, from Tacoma to Seattle, from New Hampshire to Boston. Some won’t commute at all, choosing instead to work completely virtually from a small town, perhaps where their parents still live. The whole narrative of the past 200 years, of the young person moving to the big city, may turn a little upside down in the years ahead.”
About 4 in 10 survey respondents were not working remotely before the shutdowns but were able to during the shutdowns, and more than 28% of them said that they expect to continue to work remotely or have the option to work from home after the shutdown ends. In Seattle, 44% expect to work remotely indefinitely—by far the highest of any of the high-cost cities surveyed.
