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I have two points I think: there are more components than you are giving high COL areas credit for, and that even if high COL see some sort of exodus, this is n
by tjr225 4y ago
I have two points I think: there are more components than you are giving high COL areas credit for, and that even if high COL see some sort of exodus, this is not good for low cost of living areas.
I have been working remote for startups since 2019 and for whatever reasons, you could attribute this to low interest rates I suppose in your favor, things have gotten INSANELY more expensive. NYC, Boston, DC, Seattle, SF, LA, Miami I don't think they are getting any cheaper. These are Americas Elite Cities and thats going to command a demand that might seem to defy logic.
However I think people genuinely love living in these big HCOL cities. Otherwise it would defy all reason why they have been population centers for hundreds and hundreds of years. Take for instance Amsterdam; has Amsterdam gotten cheaper in the last 500 years?
To my second point, even if we are lucky and the money gets spread around a little bit what happens to the person working for 7$ an hour at the Hyvee in the Ozarks just because a small flurry of people from San Francisco and Seattle decided to settle there? What happens when he can't afford the property taxes on his paid off home anymore because a a random demand driven spike has increase the value of the properties around him to a point where he can't afford his property taxes anymore?
What happens when he can't afford his medical bills because of this? I've seen what happens and its a hunched over old dude outside of a tent on the streets of Seattle.
This isn't really the tech workers fault or the locals fault, but the fault of our government to account for inequality. Just something I've been thinking about. I just don't think that remote work is going to make life easier for anyone in the short term, except for the already spoiled white collar worker.
- adam_arthur 4y agoCertainly people will continue to enjoy living in specific cities and near to things. I don't dispute that. I dispute that real estate will rise in real terms nationally. Now that the constraint of working in a specific location is gone, yes, people will migrate to areas for desirability of living, not because they're forced to for work. However, price is an aspect of desirability. It's very hard to imagine how the Bay Area could maintain residential real estate pricing if all big tech went full remote. People like SF, but not enough to pay such a spread over arguably equivalently nice places that are much cheaper. So yes, HCOL -> LCOL drives LCOL to be more expensive. Also the reason cities existed in the past was because people needed to gather together to work/exchange goods. With remote work/internet that goes away, aside from education/leisure. You seem to be implying Amsterdam exists because people like it, and not because it was a job center. I can assure you there were very few people hundreds of years ago picking cities primarily for leisure. The need to densify/build vertically lessens when there's no concentration of a downtown for work.
- Apocryphon 4y ago> It's very hard to imagine how the Bay Area could maintain residential real estate pricing if all big tech went full remote. Plenty of people want to live in the Bay Area beyond those working in big tech. This isn't Detroit; there are plenty of other industries that hire people here. Not to mention all of the working class people who are commuting in from Richmond, Vallejo, and other LCOL areas. People want to move there for the Mediterranean climate. For the political climate. Not to mention the children of locals who have been living at home for extended amounts of time. Long-time renters. Remote work will not bring down real estate prices as much as you believe. Especially since housing scarcity props up the prices. The real estate market, like all markets of the modern era, can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.