Booming ‘Zoom Towns’ Should Ease City Housing Costs
With highly paid remote workers looking as if they’ll stay put in vacation spots, pricey urban areas might become more affordable.
It’s no longer just a second home.
Photographer: James MacDonald/Bloomberg
Housing in a certain type of town couldn’t be hotter. And some of them have been getting attention way out of proportion to their importance to the economy for an obvious reason: They’re the places where corporate executives, Wall Street barons, Hollywood stars and more than a few journalists have fled to escape the perceived dangers of crowded cities filled with people who might be carrying the coronavirus.
As well-paid knowledge workers who can do their jobs anywhere now flock to these “Zoom towns,” home prices are surging and housing inventory is dwindling. Normally, high prices and low inventory would lead to a construction boom, but many of these communities tightly regulate new building. The upshot might be a brief boom that gets choked off by unsustainable prices.
The U.S. now is several months into the housing-market recovery and we have early data about where the hot spots are. It’s hardly a surprise that home prices are up 25% from a year ago in the Hamptons, given its proximity to the enormous New York job market and its throngs of knowledge workers,