How Working From Home Affects the Real Estate Market
Regardless of your thoughts on the 'remote work' wave, it has made a significant impact to the SoCal housing market.
Since 2020, we have been helping families move to OC from all over the US. Mostly from cities... New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Jose and so on.
Typically, the things that they're looking for are safe, clean and beautiful area. Which OC has all of it.
Here is what we've found interesting about this. Now that we're halfway through 2023, will work from home continue? Most of the people that have moved out of these cities were able to do so because they're now working from home (mostly).
This morning, Zoom (the video conferencing company) ended it's fully remote work culture. They're requiring that employees move within 50 miles of an office. They're making the change because they've seen a large decline in employee productivity.
Ironic..?
Does this affect the housing market here in OC?
Here are two different opinions on it.
Negative Impact
Work from home slowly goes away, and a lot of the high income earners that have moved to OC start to move back to cities.
This would likely impact the housing values on medium to higher end neighborhoods.
Positive Impact
Employers notice where their employees have moved (closer to the coast, outside of cities) and they open offices in those areas. This, in my opinion is more likely and would be incredible for property values in the areas where this happens.
What do you think is going to happen?
PS - Stay updated with the market at SoCalHomesForSale.com
PPS - Did you see our last blog on the August Market Update? It's not what you're thinking...
Discussion
This is an interesting topic you bring up. I would have never thought of how remote working would impact housing markets around the US. I think you are very optimistic in this post. I would love to see maga companies doing something that would benefit its employees (ie opening office space where people relocated to), as I am not sure I see how it would benefit the corporation. I hope you are right about that. It is truly ironic that Zoom is requiring people to come back to work. As they are one of the companies that directly benefited from Covid and the move to remote work. I think it is a bad move on Zooms part, but we will see. Great post.
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