The great migration. Has Covid-19 change city living completely

[Rory Galvin]

Hi All,

Curious to know people's thoughts on how Covid-19 will impact people's desire to live in urban environments over the next 30 years.

Anyone who works at a desk no longer needs to be in the office Monday to Friday.

In a recent Bloomberg survey,  30% of office staff work from home at least 1 day a week. Post-Covid this expected to rise to 50%. A nearly 100% increase. Twitter, Google, and Facebook are letting some staff work from home forever.

 It would be great to hear peoples thoughts on how this will impact the real estate market.

Regards,

Rory

[Abel Curiel]

@Rory Galvin I think Google, Twitter and FB are leading the surge. Many other companies will follow.

This shift has already impacted the New York City market. Vacancies in Manhattan are up and we're seeing landlords offer concessions of 1-2 FREE months for new incoming tenants. Sales inventory in NYC has increased as well as many flock to the suburbs... East to Long Island, West to New Jersey, North to Westchester/Upstate NY and South to Georgia, the Carolinas and Florida.

Its tough to gage how long this will last but I don't see it slowing down anytime soon because of the reasons you mentioned... more folks are working from home and they don't seem to want to do that in congested areas. The incentive to living in/near the City was the short commute time and thats no longer an incentive.

Curious to see what other BP members have to say and curious to read whats going on in other metro areas.

Thanks for starting this thread, Rory!

Abel