Are 'Zoom Towns' Making Housing Less Affordable? (pewtrusts.org) 82
The CFO of a vacation-rental management company recently told Oregon Public Broadcasting that 20% of people renting a vacation home did so for the first time during the pandemic.
The nonprofit state policy news site Stateline sees a larger trend: Even before the pandemic, the destination towns of the West had a shortage of affordable housing. Limited supply, the remote nature of some of the communities, zoning restrictions and even short construction seasons all contributed.
But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated everything, including the rise of so-called Zoom towns. Freed from physical offices, suddenly people could live, work and recreate in the vacation communities of the West, with few needs beyond a high-speed internet connection to do jobs that formerly required their presence in major cities. It also in recent years became much easier for owners of second homes to list vacancies with internet-based property firms that promise a steady cash flow in places with seasonal, tourism-based economies. When those homes enter the short-term vacation rental pool, they're no longer available to the local workforce. Brian Chesky, Airbnb's CEO, said recently that about one-fifth of the company's business by room nights is now stays of 30 days or more. People are booking longer stays that combine work and leisure, an area the company sees as full of potential growth...
There are few statewide efforts to address the effects of short-term rentals; some states, such as Idaho, outright prohibit local governments from enacting bans.... In general, the vacation rental industry also fights efforts to enact short-term moratoriums or bans...
[F]ew popular tourist communities in the West have enough affordable options for the staff necessary to run a vacation destination in peak season. In Montana, people who can't afford the rent in some tourist towns have been camping more regularly on public lands in the vicinity, encroaching on grizzly territory. The housing shortage has led directly to more encounters between bears and people, said Bill Avey, a National Forest supervisor in the region. In Whitefish, a gateway to Montana's Glacier National Park, the lack of affordable workforce housing in 2021 forced nearly all food- or beverage-related businesses to curtail hours or close at least one day a week at the height of the summer tourist season, said Lauren Oscilowski, who owns the Spotted Bear Spirits distillery. Over the past year, about half the people on her 11-person team have been forced to move because their landlords decided to turn their housing into more lucrative short-term rentals.
"There's this national thing where hospitality people aren't returning to hospitality because the wages are too low, or they're sick of dealing with the public or whatever it is," Oscilowski said. "But that's just a piece of it. The bigger piece for us is really housing...."
The nonprofit state policy news site Stateline sees a larger trend: Even before the pandemic, the destination towns of the West had a shortage of affordable housing. Limited supply, the remote nature of some of the communities, zoning restrictions and even short construction seasons all contributed.
But the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated everything, including the rise of so-called Zoom towns. Freed from physical offices, suddenly people could live, work and recreate in the vacation communities of the West, with few needs beyond a high-speed internet connection to do jobs that formerly required their presence in major cities. It also in recent years became much easier for owners of second homes to list vacancies with internet-based property firms that promise a steady cash flow in places with seasonal, tourism-based economies. When those homes enter the short-term vacation rental pool, they're no longer available to the local workforce. Brian Chesky, Airbnb's CEO, said recently that about one-fifth of the company's business by room nights is now stays of 30 days or more. People are booking longer stays that combine work and leisure, an area the company sees as full of potential growth...
There are few statewide efforts to address the effects of short-term rentals; some states, such as Idaho, outright prohibit local governments from enacting bans.... In general, the vacation rental industry also fights efforts to enact short-term moratoriums or bans...
[F]ew popular tourist communities in the West have enough affordable options for the staff necessary to run a vacation destination in peak season. In Montana, people who can't afford the rent in some tourist towns have been camping more regularly on public lands in the vicinity, encroaching on grizzly territory. The housing shortage has led directly to more encounters between bears and people, said Bill Avey, a National Forest supervisor in the region. In Whitefish, a gateway to Montana's Glacier National Park, the lack of affordable workforce housing in 2021 forced nearly all food- or beverage-related businesses to curtail hours or close at least one day a week at the height of the summer tourist season, said Lauren Oscilowski, who owns the Spotted Bear Spirits distillery. Over the past year, about half the people on her 11-person team have been forced to move because their landlords decided to turn their housing into more lucrative short-term rentals.
"There's this national thing where hospitality people aren't returning to hospitality because the wages are too low, or they're sick of dealing with the public or whatever it is," Oscilowski said. "But that's just a piece of it. The bigger piece for us is really housing...."
No (Score:5, Insightful)
If a destination was already a prime holiday destination it was already short of affordable housing, this is true whether you're talking Oregon US, or Cornwall UK. Remote working has made fuck all difference here.
In the rest of the country though, it's created balance; people have left places where house prices were grossly overpriced (London, San Francisco) and can now afford a place that's more than just a bedroom with a toilet and microwave in it and buy a proper house. The places they've moved to have certainly seen their house prices rise, but this has also created a boom for local businesses. I always did an hour+ commute to a city centre, the fact I don't have to now is great, but our local village general store, post office, and fish and chip shop have gone from barely surviving to flat out thriving. All have been able to refurb providing jobs for local people.
Affordability is relative. Have house prices gone up in some places like where I live? Sure, but local wealth has gone up to match, whilst places people are seeing have seen house prices fall and become more affordable. Similarly those people living outside of major cities can now apply for and get much higher paid remote jobs in those cities; opportunities are now open to them that never were before, meaning that even if local house prices go up, their ability to afford them has increased by a far more significant amount. Money saved not having to commute is also a massive boon for affordability (no more £5000 a year train tickets for example).
It's a great rebalancing, and that's exactly what's needed to make housing more affordable for everyone. So in answer to the summary's sweeping generalisation the answer is a resounding no - even if house prices have gone up more in some places than other, _affordability_ overall has improved across the board massively.
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In Vancouver BC, housing prices are still going through the roof and wages haven't moved. The biggest affordability difference in the world. Whistler, the famous ski hill, and areas near it, this article is spot on. But also for Vancouver. People are moving here from all over. And in many of those places, housing is already way higher than what Canadians can afford, so they don't have an issue paying for what an average Canadian can't afford. The average family income in Canada is around CDN70K. In Vancouve
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Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is the cost of the land in many places, not the cost of the house itself. As you said, you can drop a house for 200k euro. The same is true in USA but the land cost here are more then the structure in many of the desirable areas people want to live.
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In the US you'll also pay for all kinds of permits too. Even if the land is cheap, you can build cheap, you still have to get the government to allow you and the government has costs that need to be paid.
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"Europe" is pretty big, not surprising you can build a house for 200k somewhere.
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> In Vancouver BC, housing prices are still going through the roof and wages haven't moved.
Vancouver isn't based on fundamentals. It's a place for Chinese money launderers to sink their money so Xi can't easily confiscate it.
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Exactly that. Taking one location like Vancouver and claiming it disproves the whole across North America and that the UK is different is just dumb. The whole reason London prices were so high in the first place is because it's where the Russian oligarchs all hid their money from Putin, just as the Chinese are doing in Vancouver.
OP's point still stands, a few edge cases that have nothing to do with remote working don't disprove that.
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Even though it is not a point of the article, same thing happening in Croatia, but all along the coast and its islands. Germans and Austrians on one hand, Russians and Ukranians on the other side. With a good dose of Croatia's mafia. All of them buying up properties and building villas nobody spends more than a week or two per year in, and pushing out locals to less desireable places or even emigration.
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I don't know, this shit has bubble written all over it:
https://infogram.com/1pmneqdzz... [infogram.com]
Notice there are two peaks? And what was that first one well known for? Maybe it won't pop, I don't know. The thing with bubbles is they're hard to predict, and a lot of times just when you start to think it's an ongoing trend, it pops. Either way, I think real estate speculation is way out of control, and it might be a good idea to put limits on it, say like limiting the number of properties a person or a corporate enti
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In Australia I'm seeing a few more balancing effects. Sydney is the most expensive place to live but also one of the highest paying, and companies there are able to hire people from other areas around Australia for remote work. This is pushing up
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If a destination was already a prime holiday destination it was already short of affordable housing, this is true whether you're talking Oregon US, or Cornwall UK. Remote working has made fuck all difference here.
That is not strictly true. The price of property in Cornwall went up significantly in the last 2 years whilst the prices around London only rose a little, comparatively stable compared to the south west. Also both Oregon and Cornwall are big places, sure the property in tourist towns like Newquay was already expensive, but less well travelled towns weren't, especially compared to living in London or the South East. I'm sure the same is true of Oregon. However the exodus from the cities has made the prices o
blah blah blah WHAT? (Score:2)
If the headline talks about "affording housing" the summary better tell me about how affording and housing go together... not about vacationing in a vacation home during a pandemic.
Summaries are supposed to summarise. This isn't a summary; it's not short, nor is it to the point.
Betteridge says "No". (Score:3)
Housing is less affordable for all the reasons cited in the first quoted paragraph of the article, and also wages not keeping up with inflation.
Re:Betteridge says "No". (Score:5, Insightful)
Housing affordability is primarily a function of the ratio of people to houses.
If people were paid more across the board, houses would just become more expensive across the board. Though it may be bad for other reasons that wages are not keeping up with inflation, that is not a contributor to the housing affordability problem. Consider the flip side: if low wages were THE reason that people couldn't afford houses, then you would have empty houses all over the place, costing the property developers money every single day that they sit empty. Nobody is going to tolerate that, and either those prices will come down or the houses will be bulldozed and something else built there.
Either way, its just a function of supply and demand. When there are more people who need houses than there are houses, prices go up. There is one and only one solution to that problem: build more houses. Done. The prices will fall as the number of people competing for each house falls.
Of course homeowners don't like it when housing prices fall, because it hits their net worth. They represent a large and powerful voting demographic, and are a primary contributor to the various restrictions that prevent new houses from being built.
Re:Betteridge says "No". (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm the UK one of the biggest problems is that houses have become an investment. People but houses to rent them out, often via a management company so they don't have any direct involvement. People are looking at the poor pension options and seeing rental income as a better option.
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This is a good start, but incomplete.
Real-estate investors and developers put their money into projects that yield the highest return. Sometimes (as in the SF Bay Area) that's offices rather than housing. Oftentimes that's high-end housing rather than affordable housing. Increasingly, as the market has become globally financialized, it's a project "somewhere else". The result is that developers aren't interested in building enough housing to drive the price down in any given place.
Here's a recent exampl
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Yes that makes sense. If we really want to pull the cost of housing down we might need to spend taxpayer dollars to build those houses. If the project succeeds that would reduce the profit-potential of houses even more, so developers will become even less interested, but that's how the market works. Developers got bills to pay, too.
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If there was housing demand backed by across the board higher income, wouldn't there be more housing construction to meet the demand?
The criticism now seems to be the new housing being built is "luxury" housing, not affordable by median incomes. Most people seem to really think its just market rate with a veneer of newness, but the point sort of stands that its less affordable for a chunk of the population.
In this fine article, I'd argue that the issue is that people with a high level of disposable income
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You don't seem to be connected to reality. Right now in the US there are more vacant homes than homeless people. We have plenty of houses. t's not "just a function of supply and demand", not in the LEAST!!!!
And you seem to have missed the point of the article, and the larger point that at least the summary seems to miss.
It's all about location. The expensive cities are expensive not because everyone wants to live in the city, but because that's where the concentration of jobs has always been. The desire for
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This is the response I’ve been looking for - one that acknowledges the issue and points out that it’s primarily a problem for places rich people (top 10-20%, not just the usual 1% boogeyman) like to vacation. Being in that demographic and spending more than half my life in the other types of towns you describe, I’ve been acutely aware of the challenges and opportunities of both vacation towns and, for lack of a better term, “80% towns”.
Vacation towns, for example ski resorts,
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This article caught my attention, my son and his fiancee are driving from Orlando, Florida to Whitefish right now, they should get there tomorrow. She has been spending summers working as a park ranger in national parks. This past summer she worked at Glacier National Park. She decided she did not want to come back to Florida and got a full time job at an outdoor outfitter store.
My son is tired of their long range relationship so he is moving out there with her. Her parents also live in Orlando so she
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It is interesting that you opened your post with a personal attack on me and then proceeded to make a point that was entirely compatible with mine.
When I was talking about housing price being a function of the ratio of people to houses, I thought it was obvious that location was a factor. Building houses out in the middle of the deep desert isn't going to do squat for housing prices, and everybody knows that. The houses must be built where people want to live, in order for that ratio to be impacted and fo
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Nice attempt to make me seem like the bad guy instead of accepting that you were wrong. Your first sentence was,
Housing affordability is primarily a function of the ratio of people to houses.
Then you follow that up with accusing me of personal attacks, and this load of crap,
When I was talking about housing price being a function of the ratio of people to houses, I thought it was obvious that location was a factor.
Note the entire lack of the word "location" in your first post.
Yes, the greater internet fuckwad theory is alive and well. You're just doing it more eloquently than most.
When you're dead wrong, instead of accepting that you try to paint someone pointing out your argument's flaws as a fuckwad. Congratulations. You
Help! (Score:3)
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How deep did you have to dig to setup your basement tent?
Where did you put Dishy McFlatface?
New York City and Sand Fransisco and Austin (Score:2)
In highly desirable areas, maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they're making it possible for people to move from less desirable areas to more desirable areas. Of course the people who used to have the desirable areas to themselves they're probably upset that people who couldn't previously live there (because they needed to live elsewhere in order make enough money to afford to spend a little time each in a resort town) can now afford to live there year round.
It's understandable that people who have lived in a nice place for a long time would resent other people wanting to live there too. Understandable, but not actually a valid complaint. You were lucky to live in that nice place, but that luck doesn't give you the right to force someone to sell/rent to you for less money if someone else who also wants to live in that nice place is willing to pay more.
Hopefully the increase in money flowing into the area will allow for building more housing, but of course the local government could block that, either due to corruption or due to concerns about ruining the area by letting too many people in. But "I was here first" isn't really a valid excuse for denying people access to stuff you don't own. Of course if you do own it, you can make the decision of whether you prefer the thing or the money.
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Remote working has fundamentally changed which areas are desirable. My sister-in-law and her husband moved to Durango, CO in 2019. They expected to rent for a while until they saved up enough money for a down payment. A flood of tele-workers fundamentally changed the demand side of the housing market, so they are not sure when they will be able to afford to buy a house. Their choice to live in a small town with natural amenities was conscious, not "luck". It is legitimate to complain about that kind of
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Depending on their age, not a chance. Most middle class people under 30 are sure to have college debt. They've also had fewer years to invest into a 401k (that can be used for a down payment) because they haven't been in the job market even a decade.
Also, today housing is incredibly expensive and has been for several years. The last time housing was remotely affordable was after the last crash in 2008/9.
Re:In highly desirable areas, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused. Are they complaining about newcomers being priced out of real estate in Durango, CO prior to the pandemic, or complaining about having to compete with other newcomers for real estate during the COVID pandemic?
At what point should a community be welcoming some newcomers with reasonable real estate prices then transitioning to shutting out newcomers? Just a bit after the time that they moved, right?
Taking about trying to bar the door behind you.
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At what point should a community be welcoming some newcomers with reasonable real estate prices then transitioning to shutting out newcomers? Just a bit after the time that they moved, right?
When the rate of people moving in shoots up enormously?
They're not saying "we want to be the last people who get to move in". They're pointing out that when people move in at a low rate, things work differently from when people move in at a high rate. When they moved in, the rate of people moving in was low enough that the market could handle it.
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Well there's an interesting concept. And how do you propose that the community shut out newcomers? Restrict who a property owner can sell their property to? Restrict who can move into an area?
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When the rate of people moving in shoots up enormously?
Define "shoots up enormously"? Quantify it, give it a rate per capita or over time, or its rate of change/derivative.
Without reasonable, objective and measurable quantification, this is like when people say "crime is the worst in history" out of subjective personal anecdotes when all available data for the last 3 decades demonstrate that, barring some shitty corners of society and inevitable blips due to a pandemic, that we are conclusively in the safest, most law-abiding times since the 70's crime wave.
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I think you misread. It is not about people moving from big cities to more desirable places.
You may be right. I thought the article was about people moving out of the million dollar shoeboxes that they only bought because it was the best they could afford within a two hour commute of their office.
But so what? Does it really make any difference to the person in the beautiful resort town whether the new resident sold their old place or not? The new resident likes the resort town for the same reason the longtime residents do, but wasn't previously able to justify spending more than a week or two per
Gyms love this model (Score:2)
You know, it sounds like those communities are experiencing the "gym" model. That's where many people pay for services that they rarely if ever use.
Those places get to charge people property and other taxes, yet since they aren't living there many services will not be used. Their kids won't attend the schools, they won't need police protection since they aren't usually there, etc. They have to pay those taxes and don't even get to vote since they often aren't residents.
Nonsense and this is why: (Score:4, Insightful)
Relocation in North America is optional not mandatory not least because of our vast amounts of available land.
Urban crowding is a CHOICE borne of gold rush mentality. Rich people make the adult choice to flood urban areas so aspirationals make the adult choice to flood after them.
Choice is not mandatory. There is ample land for everyone and telecommuting offers every advantage. Those who crave life in urban hives know what they signed up for.
I choose a different personal solution and escaped the impressively nasty urban Northeast in 1981. I escaped the overcrowding (geography limits usable land and all the good land is horrifically expensive), traffic, taxes, highly restrictive lifestyle (to me the idea of renting garage space is absurd when I can and do add whatever I wish in my ag zoned area) and every other inherent downside of urban living.
The traditional (because it makes sense) path of working in cities then bolting far, far away to retire can be bettered by wisely living where you wish to retire in the first place. That beats being chased out of your home by punitive taxation when you move to a fixed income.
" Soon we'll be back to Victorian living conditions, and medieval working conditions, with little middle ground between those who make enough (as more of those slip back), and those who don't. "
Only by choice or stupid planning. Millions of North Americans thrive outside Hobbesian urban hellholes. I'm among them and I'm not special. Lower incomes in non-urban areas permit far more comfortable lifestyles. Someone in South Carolina can live comfortably on twenty bucks an hour while if you don't pull six figures in the Northeast you can't afford gutter space.
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"I work in healthcare and am single. I cannot afford to live here yet do so with assistance."
What compelling survival need dictates that choice above all others?
Why do you not hit the road and work contract, saving your money instead of wasting it living where you do not need to live then buy in someplace affordable later in life when income and investments make that easy?
Any (competent) single healthcare worker has many career options. For example my sister chose physiotherapy and when she gets bored take
Re: Quite right and not hard (Score:2)
The fear of seeking one's fortune by moving within immensely wealthy societies is absurd as is clinging to ones birthplace.
It was once expected for young people to flee the nest and seek their fortunes, and that was in unimaginably more difficult times than today (my parents youth during the Great Depression is the canonical US example).
"but the people impacted aren't going to like it "
Then their values are foolish so they need to grow up and harden up. Emigrants leave their entire country so moving a few m
Government makes housing less affordable (Score:2, Interesting)
Inflate the money supply? Government.
Create restrictive zoning? Government.
Enforce favoritism for developers and builders? Government.
Subsidize public transportation to force cheap labor out of the area? Government.
Housing prices are high because of supply of money being high and demand by those with money to buy property with it.
And public transportation makes it even harder for the poor to live close to work. Donâ(TM)t pay them more, tell them to ride the train 3 hours a day, instead.
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Subsidize public transportation to force cheap labor out of the area? Government.
I'm at a loss figuring this one out.
Gov can also solve it through the IRS + min wage (Score:5, Insightful)
Housing prices are high because of supply of money being high and demand by those with money to buy property with it.
And public transportation makes it even harder for the poor to live close to work. Donâ(TM)t pay them more, tell them to ride the train 3 hours a day, instead.
You forgot one important thing, Mr Anti-Gov, the gov let the minimum wage stagnate due to pressure from the business community, well more than half of which lobbied for it are Republican (although many Democrats did as well).
The natural endpoint of capitalism is monopoly. The winner will eventually take all....not "winners," but "winner." Income inequality will only get worse unless the gov does something about it and I can bet money, whatever the solution, you won't like it...probably no one will, but you will need it.
Since WW2, we've had a robust middle-class centric economy until about the Reagan era in which unions weekend and gov regulations were peeled back, but probably more importantly, superior companies rose to the front and gained more power and influence.
Every decade more and more low and medium skill middle class professions shrink...in far greater numbers than the new high skill middle-class jobs created. Every decade a greater share of the population is working at or very close to minimum wage.
If you have a decent wage job, chances are it's only because someone wealthier and more powerful than you has not figured out how to automate it away or make you do 4x the work for the same pay. I have one of those high skill high pay jobs and I know it will be gone in 20-40 years....ether completely automated away or changed so drastically it won't resemble my job one bit.
At some point, well all will be at the mercy of the 1% unless we do something to check their power. One of their greatest sources of power is real estate. They earn more money than they know what to do with or ever can spend, so they invest in real estate at huge profits.
Those rising housing costs are much more due to real estate speculators and investors than real, organic demand. On my block, there are 5 luxury houses, worth over a million dollars that aren't even occupied for what anyone can tell. Chinese investors bought them. They seem to visit about once every 4 months. No one goes in, no packages or food are delivered, we never see their lights on. They're beautiful homes, but those 5 homes are taken off the market in my community and the buyers overpaid, ensuring housing prices are kept high. This happens to work in my favor short-term, but is harmful long-term. It makes it harder for people to move in and they're barely paying taxes.
We really need to crack down on real estate investment. Raise tax rates on 3rd homes or properties held on to for more than a year. You want to flip a house?...fine...you got a year before uncle sam gets double the cut. You want 2 vacation homes? OK, well buckle up buttercup...your taxes on that 3rd home are going to double. Own many rental properties? They all need to be 90% occupied or your taxes double.
Real estate investors and people owning tons of vacation home are a cancer that needs to be stopped. We can't ban them, but we can at least make it a lot less profitable. That way they can invest in companies or charities or things that actually make the world better, whereas those investment properties just make them wealthier and our communities worse.
This can easily be done with minimal and gentle gov regulation....in a way that won't affect the non-billionaires of the world or the multi-millionaire property parasites.
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This can easily be done with minimal and gentle gov regulation....in a way that won't affect the non-billionaires of the world or the multi-millionaire property parasites.
If it's so easy, then why isn't it? Dems are getting everything they want now.
You don't watch the news, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
This can easily be done with minimal and gentle gov regulation....in a way that won't affect the non-billionaires of the world or the multi-millionaire property parasites.
If it's so easy, then why isn't it? Dems are getting everything they want now.
You haven't been following the news, have you? They can't even get Manchin and Sinema to pull their head out of their asses or even provide a logical explanation for their stupidity.
Why hasn't it been done? The donor class would never allow it. They have no political ideals, just financial goals. They'll donate to Sanders, Warren, Cruz, Trump, Bush...they don't care, but they will never let you collect more taxes on their parasitism. If Warren pulled ahead, for example, they would lobby the shit out of her...and if they can't bribe or persuade her, they will annihilate her with any lever of power they wield. Biden's having a hard enough time getting basic infrastructure passed that is really popular with the voters. Imagine how much trouble he'd have if he actually impacted all your community's parasitic real estate moguls?
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Dunno about Sinema, but Manchin doesn't want massive spending to create even worse inflation.
This is a slogan, not a statement. Manchin could easily give a counter-proposal, but he doesn't. Moreover, we are in the middle of a crisis, and there's no option but to spend and get in debt.
You have a house with a rotten roof, and you have a cash flow problem. Your choices are to let the house rot and become condemned, or get a loan to fix it (and fight a way to deal with the debt later or default.)
No one asked for these choices (and the previous administration putting us at a trilion dollar deficit d
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Subsidize the roads [archive.org] so public transportation can't exist without subsidies? Government.
Affordable housing (Score:2)
disgusting bloated piggies. have enough yet? (Score:1)
Zoom town? (Score:2)
You mean a heavy concentration of hotels and long-term residence hotels?
No wonder people can't buy a home when hotels and the like are springing up everywhere. At least the local community is gaining tax revenue from the business taxes and fees on these hotels.
High end vacation areas are for the rich. (Score:2)
Complaining they use them when they bring gobs of money to spend is absurd. Find ways to harvest their money instead. If you can't hang, go where you can. The US is a mobile society.
Change requires adaptation. If you cannot afford to live in a suddenly more wealthy location then move where you can afford to live. I did precisely that as part of my (long term, methodical, successful) planned life. Emigrants enter the US with nothing yet choose to do well. Copy success because it works.
If you want to live che
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> Emigrants enter the US with nothing yet choose to do well.
Emigrants typically have the luxury of failing down. If you're saving 5% of your paycheck, but that's enough to live in the country you came from, you may not be able to retire in the US but you surely can go back and live comfortably.
Most of the immigrants I talked to said they plan to go back home when they're done working.
The only way to compete is for US workers to plan to retire to the Philippines or Mexico or China when they retire and dr
I understand completely (Score:2)
"There's this national thing where hospitality people aren't returning to hospitality because the wages are too low, or they're sick of dealing with the public "
L'enfer c'est les autres.
Self-regulating (Score:1)
While it will take years, maybe even decades, the problem will sort itself out. When the menial laborers and service people (baristas, waiters, etc) can't afford to live close enough to these areas to work, these areas will become unattractive slums due to a lack of upkeep.
Trendy places... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have an empty property... (Score:2)
I 've been looking for a place to retire to (Score:2)
young and spitting out puppies? (Score:2)
Try rural Japan.
https://www.rethinktokyo.com/f... [rethinktokyo.com]
No, more like wat er finding its level (Score:2)
Remote work has made it easier to move where you want to live. This is like making it easier for water to flow. Given the chance, water will fill in the low spots and recede from the higher places. In the same way, housing in cheaper areas will rise, while housing in more expensive areas will fall. But there are so, so many cheaper places to live (like the Oklahoma panhandle) that in the majority of them, nobody will see any changes at all.
Not worth it. (Score:2)
To make some place worthwhile it needs good attractions. Ski mountains, beach/lake houses, etc.
It's not enough to merely have the mountain or water feature. I would want:
1) Grocery delivery
2) A restaurant worth paying $100 a meal.
3) Social activities BESIDES a place to drink with 20 year olds.
4) An airport and good medical care less than an hour away.
These amenities need a large populations to support. Large populations = a city. (Miami for a beach, Salt Lake City/Tahoe for a mountain.
It ends up being