Opinion | The work from home revolution: a force for change – but for better or worse?
- Pandemic-induced remote working is altering the way people live their lives, and affecting housing prices in the US
- However, there are also signs that the trend may accentuate wealth inequalities, and aggravate mental health problems
Others analysing the pandemic world use stronger superlatives. A Forbes article calls working from home as transformative as the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s. Futurist Mark Pesce says: “The pandemic appears to have reversed the migration toward urban centres that has been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution.”
Pesce adds: “People are now fleeing cities like San Francisco while rewriting the rules of office work. After all, why maintain expensive homes in or near a city when you can work from anywhere, via satellite?”
Indeed. In the United States, remote work is allowing employees to relocate to wherever it is cheaper to buy or rent a place. While a median priced home in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley is US$3.3 million, in Austin, Texas, it is US$575,000, for example.
Not surprisingly, tech workers who can do so are moving. The San Francisco Bay Area is losing people while places like Austin, Boise, Tampa, Miami and the Carolinas are growing, with accompanying sharp rises in home prices. What makes for a winning destination? Zonda, a California housing analytics firm, says winners offer lower taxes, active lifestyles, employment opportunities and good weather.