The three most important attributes of property are  location, location, location.  This expression has  been around for a while , but 2020 to 2021 â€

How the Great Zoom Migration Upended the Housing Market

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2021-06-15 21:30:04

The three most important attributes of property are location, location, location. This expression has been around for a while , but 2020 to 2021 — emerging from COVID-19 — has been turning the maxim upside down. Now, maybe it’s WiFi, location, location.

COVID is spurring one of the most profound changes in commercial and residential real estate in the last 100 years by decoupling employment from location. And the effect won’t just be real estate prices; it will likely have far-reaching second-order effects on families, education, wealth inequality, salaries, and more.

Take the San Francisco Bay Area, which is home to some of the highest salaries in the country. The median home in Palo Alto is $3.2 million. The median home in Livermore, 90 minutes away during rush hour, is $1 million, and typically newer with far more land. Go out east another hour and the numbers drop even further. A 6,000+-square-foot house on 20 acres with a waterpark is $2.8 million in Wilton, CA — a mere two hours away from Silicon Valley.

People thought that self-driving cars would make “far out” real-estate far more palatable, since the commute would at least be painless. But it turns out that it was the great decoupling of employment from physical location — through remote work and more — that beat the self-driving wave.

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