Remote workers are moving to outdoor vacation destinations

[Demovictory9]

Calif. — For years, Ben Jarso couldn’t mix work and play. He worked at Facebook in Silicon Valley and on weekends drove almost four hours to Lake Tahoe to hit the ski slopes. When pandemic-related restrictions freed him to work remotely, he decided to merge his passions.
Truckee, a town on the lake’s north shore, was a perfect choice with Wi-Fi-ready houses and easy access to his favorite ski resort. He started making offers on properties. Again and again he lost out. Turns out too many other people had the same idea.

He finally got a house, but it took quick action. He contacted the seller as soon as the four-bedroom home popped up on his real estate app, made the first offer and agreed to no inspection requirements. His new $900,000 home has a large pine deck and two fireplaces and boasts views of Donner Lake.

“I think it was a steal,” said Jarso, a 31-year-old product manager.

Ben Jarso moved north from the Bay Area to Truckee, since virtual working is common at Facebook, his employer.



Housing markets are hot nationwide, but few areas have seen the surge in home prices and residents as outdoor vacation destinations.

“You can live your life on vacation,” said Rich La Rue, a real estate broker in the Palm Springs area. “All the things that you love to do: hiking, biking, whatever it is. A property comes on the market here and it’s a feeding frenzy.”

Case in point: the average asking price of a home in the desert city is now $1 million, a 30% one-year increase.


https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2021-04-30/covid-wfh-boosts-palm-springs-lake-tahoe-housing-markets

[soothsayer]

1. I love this development. Hope it sticks

[Demsrule86]

21. My daughter just got an offer to be a senior accountant and work from home was part of the deal.

She will get a big raise and has only been out of school for four years...wow. She lives with her boyfriend and he works from home for a big California firm in IT. He lives in Ohio and receives a California-style salary...maybe a bit lower but still a very good salary. He is an only child and his parents had him when he was older so he wants to be close to them...hell of a nice kid. He treats my daughter very well.

[FirstLight]

2. As a Tahoe local ...just know it is creating a serious housing/wage issue here.

They are buying up everything, driving the market out of reach of locals to even rent and availability is gone.

Not to mention they also move up here and have some adaptability issues...especially with wildlife. We have had two front page stories in the paper about living wioth wildlife in the past 2-3 weeks. People are calling to have bears "removed" when they are just walking by...and a coyote was shot with an arrow as well.

I hate to be so damn anti-social but myself and many other long term locals are seriously upset and disturbed by the trend.

[JI7]

3. These things should be explained when they are looking to buy

[Demovictory9]

4. In my south calif nextdoor group..regular topic "why dont they do something about the coyotes"

Recently someone replied "coyotes were here before us" 🙂

[FirstLight]

5. yep...and a healthy apex predator population is good for the ecosystems...

And we've been saying that one for years... especially about the bears

[tinrobot]

7. True, but coyotes didn't get to feed on small pets and house trash before us.

Last edited Fri Apr 30, 2021, 10:38 PM - Edit history (1)

The density of coyotes in urban areas is much higher than in nature. They get easy meals and no predators.

[ShazzieB]

10. Yes.

We have coyotes here in the Chicago suburbs. They keep a low profile, but I've had several sightings.

They're not a problem at all, afaic. Yes, they will eat small pets if they get the chance, but my Willow is a 100%, 24/7 indoor cat, so I don't have to worry about that.

[tinrobot]

17. We have packs out in the open here in Los Angeles

You'll see coyotes just walking down the street in broad daylight like they own the place.

At night, they'll start yipping and howling. Then you hear some poor dog screaming for it's life. Not a pleasant thing to wake up to.

They need to be controlled, but I'm at a loss for how that could be done. Animal rights activists want to treat them as dogs, and that stirs up a lot of emotions. But they're not dogs. They eat dogs.

[DBoon]

14. Coyotes have their own internet

and they ask, "What do we do about all the humans moving into our neighborhood?"

[Demovictory9]

19. Lol

[tcslee2020]

6. I don't like this

I don't think this will last in the long term.

I think the concept of remote work is great, but if this remains, companies are going to be looking for remote workers in cheaper locations and start to pay less. I've been looking for an IT job for the past year. I have noticed that the remote jobs pay less. Give it more time I think this will be the trend.

I also think that this makes it harder to find a job. Now you are not only competing against local candidates for a job, the jobs are now open across the whole country.

[Demovictory9]

8. You make some good points. And those remote workers who purchaed

In remote locals might find themselves trapped when remote work winds down

[Demsrule86]

22. I am not sure it will wind down...it saves company money. And honestly, one is more productive at

home-not less.

[Lancero]

32. And that is exactly why it will.

If you can increase productivity from your current workforce, do you really need to hire on more people?

If you can increase productivity from your current workforce to the point that they're able to finish all their current tasks, days or even weeks ahead of schedule, then do you really need that big of a workforce?

Companies love saving money, you're right. So why would they waste money hiring on more people, why would they waste money keeping on uncecessary workers, when they can instead cut them loose and enjoy the savings?

[DBoon]

15. any job hat can be done remotely in the USA can also be done in the rest of the world

and the high tech workers living in Lake Tahoe will be competing with workers in Vietnam, Nigeria and Honduras.

[Demsrule86]

23. That is true whether you work at an office or at home. Entire accounting firms have moved jobs

overseas. GM for example has their Payroll ETC in Jamaica. We can and should enact laws to penalize companies that move jobs overseas.

[tinrobot]

18. Let's see... companies pay less for employees and they also save on office rents.

The math is pretty easy on that.

Remote is here to stay.

[FirstLight]

33. Ive been trying to find work for the past year +

finding remote jobs just as hard if not harder to get into...
also...since the application process is so automated, my qualifications and age dont even get me a human contact, jst a electronic rejection letter.

Trying to reach out locally again to find work, but I'm disabled and cant do the stuff I could when I was in my 20s

[CurtEastPoint]

9. How does a 31 year old afford a 900K house?

[roamer65]

11. Low interest rates and a LOT of payments.

[tcslee2020]

12. He works at Facebook

I did a quick google search on salary for a product manager at Facebook, and according to glassdoor.com the average for that position is 191K. So he has a very good salary.

The article said he was renting, so he didn't have something to sell and use as a downpayment.

So on a 900K purchase, 20% down, that would be a 180K downpayment. Maybe he had inheritence, or a few years of some very good bonuses, or stock options.

That still leaves a mortgage of 720K. So that is going to be > 3K a month just for principle and interest, who know what property taxes are for that kind of house in that location. So he is probably paying somewhere between 36 - 40 K a year on this place.

[Demovictory9]

13. mortgage and property tax probably about $4000. very affordable on facebook salary

[DBoon]

16. Property taxes in CA are generally 1% of purchase price

With 900K purchase, taxes would be $9K per year

Property is not re-assessed after purchase. Tax increase is capped at 2% per year.

[notinkansas]

20. Illinois. We pay more than $10,000 in real estate taxes

for a house that is a fraction of that $900,000 price. Ugh!

[Demsrule86]

24. My daughter and her boyfriend bought a house in the Tremont area of Cleveland...nice

area and expensive for us...the house was over $500,000. They have only been out of college for five years for him and four for her...it took me years to save for a house.

[DFW]

27. Here's how:

Be wicked smart, fall into a job that utilizes your skills to the max, prove that you are the best, and are irreplaceable, and demand that your employer pays you accordingly. That's what one of my daughters did at age 29. At age 31, she became the youngest partner ever at a big international law firm, and now, a few years later, she makes four times what I do (or more), and pays out a hefty six figure bill in income taxes every year.

Not exactly typical, but it can be done.

[CurtEastPoint]

28. Well done!

[DFW]

31. I think she must have borrowed some genes from some forgotten ancestors

And she's fearless. She was in law school in the USA during the Cheney-Bush recession. Law school students are expected to clerk for a law firm, Supreme Court judge, or whatever during their summer vacations. She could find nothing, so she applied for one of two positions open to work for the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in Sierra Leone. They take something like two out of 200 applicants, but she got taken, and as a "break," took Gambia Airways over to Senegal for a week, got a deadly infection, almost died, but finally got treated by a UN doctor, and her life was saved. She came back, saying how cool Africa was, etc. etc. And your incident in Senegal? Oh, that, she says. Rough, but I got cured, so it's all good.

For that matter, it takes some kind of guts to ask for a partnership when you're age 31, at the international office of a major American law firm, where you've been for less than two years, and think you can convince them you're so good at what you do (she is), that you are justified in asking for a partnership (who knows?).

I greased no wheels for her, she did all of this on her own. I did pay for that part of her Law School tuition not covered by her "diversity grant" scholarship (she applied as a German), but she did the rest all on her own. She was already an energy bundle as a baby. One of my wife's friends described her at age 2 as "Madame 10,000 volts." Her batteries don't appear to have lost any of their charge in the meantime.

[Arthur_Frain]

29. Very few people really do.

Very few houses are actually worth what the market says, and this is the problem.

Unfortunately I think this bubble is going to be really bad when it pops, and judging by the ramp up in real estate prices quite recently, I predict it will be sooner, rather than later.

Much in the same way the pandemic revealed the folly of having your health insurance tied to your job, this bubble is going to destroy the old common wisdom that real estate was always a safe place to stash your savings.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

25. This is happening where I live. Perfect Storm. Remote workers buying properties.

Home prices and rents going up. Wealthy people buying vacation homes that remain vacant because of Covid, or buying homes to use as vacation rentals.

Businesses can't find workers. Even satellite communities where rentals were available and rents were cheaper have no places for rent.

Recently tried to move my somewhat well to do disabled 83 yr older brother over here, and there is nothing for rent anywhere in the area, except rentals for $2000 a month that were $750 a month before Covid.

On weekends the more easily accessible outlying National Forest areas are dotted with expensive motor homes and travel trailers, and toy haulers, as well as lower budget tent campers.

More tourists, few service workers. Local pizza joint is take out only because they can't find workers, which exposes another problem: no mask mandates in the area causing service workers to look for safer employment elsewhere, as Covid rates are rising here again.

[displacedtexan]

26. We were just offered $3k per month (for 7 months) for our vacation home on the Washington coast, and

that's after the fees our management company would get. It’s in a small Mayberry type town on the peninsula. Working from a vacation rental is the new cubicle.