Lots of folks are speculating about what the world will look like once people emerge from the Covid induced hibernation. Zoom, Teams and other internet mediums have shown how it is possible to run companies and services remotely. But will people use this flexible employment opportunity and choose to live elsewhere?
One way to consider this is to look at why people moved before Covid-19. Porch.com is a home remodeling site and tracks this information. On average people relocate every seven years, and people don’t take it lightly. As Porch explains:
Moving is a hassle. From boxing up one home to finding another, facing a move can feel like scaling Mount Everest. It’s no wonder Americans have been moving at decreasing rates since the 1980s. In fact, the moving rate in America reached its lowest in 2018 since 1948, when the U.S. Census Bureau began tracking moving rates.
Buyers diligently write out a list of wants and needs when they start their home search. Some of these criteria change of the course of evaluating all the amenities that different areas have to offer. One in four (on Porch’s sample of 1000) said that more space was the greatest driver for a move. Realtor Magazine broke the other reasons down by percentages:
- Desire for a larger home: 26%
- Desire to own, not rent: 19%
- Downsizing: 12%
- New job or job transfer: 11%
- Desire for a better neighborhood: 9%
- Separating from a significant other: 6%
- Establishing own household (e.g. moved out of parents’ house): 6%
- Desire to be closer to family: 5%
- Desire for a shorter commute: 5%
Only 5 percent (said) they made a decision based on commute times. A job relocation prompts a greater response. Still–few buyers consider distance from employment as a significant determinant. Perhaps we should consider how many types of jobs are really affected by the ability to dial-in from a home office?
Anyone involved in the construction or maintenance of built structures (plumbers, sheet-rocker, bull doze drivers, HVAC contractors) will always drive to job sites. Then you have all the service providers who interact face-to-face and hence are tied to location such as k-12 school teachers and administrators, nurses and hospital staff, lab workers. People who build stuff like workers in a production plant are also anchored by their workplace location.
That leaves white collar jobs such as attorneys, accountants, mortgage underwriters, IT workers, architects, engineers and actuaries. Many of these jobs have already provided opportunities for their workers to work remotely. And as some of these jobs grow to include management and partnership opportunities, it is less clear that the full-time remote option would be available. A transition to more of a business ownership role would require better proximity to clients and/or employees.
I speculate that remote work won’t send homeowners off to new locations as much as their home’s floor plan. With more time spent at home, the functionality of their living space comes sharply into focus. Many will decide they need more space. Or it maybe the issue of how the space is distributed. An accountant might be fine with spending one day a week wedged in a cinder block space in the basement laundry room of a 50’s rambler, but becoming a full-time home office worker will demand a more comfortable office with appropriate buffers from family life.
This should make We Work types of built-place solutions more popular, especially in neighborhoods with smaller homes which are more difficult to expand due to limited lot sizes. Suburban neighborhoods may have more elbow room, but residents here may feel overwhelmed with the increased together-time. Whereas suburbanites used to enjoy their anonymity, perhaps this will diminish when a bunch of them no longer depart to their other lives across town. Those who seek the old sense of distance and privacy may shift out to the third tier suburbs and beyond.
Maybe the post-Covid environment won’t be about people moving away from their present communities as much as employers reaching across the country into a larger pool of talent. There will be community upsides to more folks working from home as well. Keeping people out of cars and airplanes will give back more time for family work, free up roads from congestion, and reduce pollution. Overall the great work-from-home experiment of 2020 will contribute to increased productivity in both the private and public spheres.
Home Economics 