I think the aftermath of coronavirus is really going to be larger that most people are anticipating when it comes to work and migration patterns:<p>1. In the past 25 years there has been a huge re-migration back to cores of major cities. I think that is going to stop.<p>2. Suburbs and exurbs I think will become way more popular. The normal limiting factor on those locations is the commute, but I think so many more companies will be used to remote work after this (even if they don't necessarily prefer it) that you'll see a <i>lot</i> more "come into the office once or twice a week" type things that make living in the exurbs a lot more bearable.<p>3. I don't foresee migration away from the major metros. People will still go where the jobs are, and if anything I see the pandemic making strong companies stronger and smaller, weaker companies weaker. Definitely would not be willing to put a lot of money down on this 3rd point, though, could see a trend toward 2nd/3rd tier cities.
Long-term NYC resident here (I haven't hit my decade yet, so I'll avoid calling myself a New Yorker to dodge any ire).<p>I've heard rumblings from a lot of people about moving out, mostly from people who haven't really set down roots here - which makes sense. The appeal of New York is largely all the stuff to do, and without being able to do stuff you're just stuck in a very small space that you pay a lot of money for.<p>Most of the people I hear this from expect social-distancing type measures to continue for quite some time, so especially those with small children/etc. are really thinking about whether they can do this for another year.<p>Interestingly I haven't really met anyone considering leaving the city because of the virus itself (i.e. because of concern due to population density), only those really feeling the lifestyle restrictions. They're responsible and social distancing, etc. so the thought of continuing that lifestyle without significantly more living space is getting to them.
In the aftermath of 9/11, nobody wanted to live in skyscrapers. But that fear soon faded and prices went back up.<p>It's probably too early to tell if this is a lasting trend.
As a native New Yorker there's so much about this that bugs me.<p>One, talk is cheap.<p>Two, what happened in NYC was not destined to be, and it's an easy lie leaders and those who look down on New Yorkers love to spread. Lots of big dense cities have handled this crisis well, just like some rural areas have not. Epidemics have been devastating throughout human history.<p>Three, to the people who live here and see this as inevitable and would rather flee than work together and fix the issue and protect our communities - good riddance.
I'm considering relocating from Seattle purely based on the fact that we can make WFH commonplace. Why pay insane rents to physically be in a location I can work remotely?
Browsing of real estate ads probably isn't a strong indicator. It's something people can do while home and frustrated, but it's not action.
I saw a statistic that 0.25% of NYC’s population has already died from Coronavirus (15k/6m). It seems worse there due to the density, and similarly dense cities like London are in the same boat.
Non-New Yorkers love to speculate about the end of New York with a passion which fascinates me as someone who has lived here for two decades. I love it here. Not for everyone. If you dig your exurb keep at it and enjoy.<p>NYC always has a transient crowd and a permanent crowd. It doesn't surprise me that a lot of the people who would have moved to the burbs within 1-5 years are accelerating that timeline. For us permanent residents we can't imagine living anywhere else. All of this was said after 9/11. I don't find that my rent today is lower than it was in 2002.<p>Let me also add that people today are fleeing dense areas under the belief that they can escape Coronavirus. Newsflash - everyone is probably going to get this. Flatten the curve was never about escaping the virus altogether - it is about smoothing out the burden on the healthcare system.
Not just New Yorkers, and not just 'post' Coronavirus. I've seen a fairly large number of people that had moved within the EU to other countries move back to their original home country because they don't want to be cut off from their family.
The scale of the search interest is hard to understand because no numbers are provided, just percentages.<p>Searches are up 250%. Percent of what? 1000 searches? 1 million searches? I understand that this post is content marketing for the company, but I haven't heard of it before, so I don't know if they can simply toss out a YOY % and claim that it's a trend. Reading the article, it's also not clear that the queries were coming from users based in NYC.<p>I think looking at something like Google Trends might be more representative of interest, as you can filter the data by State, try different search terms and see the % change by day, week, year or 5 years.
This isn’t any surprise, we will see a swelling of growth in Westchester, Long Island, Southern Connecticut, and Northern New Jersey, especially if partial remote work stays normalised as well. I don’t see a massive exodus out of the metro area, but the suburban share will likely grow.
Note that NYC has seen net outmigration for a few years now [1], so this could be just an acceleration of that trend.<p>[1] <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/new-york-is-losing-residents-at-an-alarming-rate-report/" rel="nofollow">https://nypost.com/2019/12/30/new-york-is-losing-residents-a...</a>
In recent weeks I've been getting different ads from usual, particularly ones for luxury NYC apartments, such as in Brooklyn, e.g. $4K/month. I'm roughly 3 hours away. People will tell you that the ad algorithm knows all, but I can't imagine why this makes sense.