Yes, I've been thinking of this the same way. As someone who plans to stay in NYC, I'm looking forward to a time when WFH is more normalized and people who live in cities are people who want to live in cities, not people who need to live in cities. It could be win-win for both types.

Maybe this sounds strange, but I think there is also a category of people who prefer suburbs or exurbs and are really bitter that the pendulum has swung back to cities in the last ~20 years.

They are really eager to see a trend out of small amounts of data. Or proclaim urban life dead, now and forever.

I personally feel strongly in the other direction. We had the infamous "white flight" and car-centric communities and life. We had the peak of urban crime in the 80s and 90s. Then we had a reversal of those trends. Yes gentrification is tough on many, yes the costs are out of control for many, but on the balance I think denser living is the right call.

I believe ghaff is referring to COVID effects, not rent. Right now in most cities all bars, restaurants, theaters and nightclubs are closed. If you can only leave your Manhattan apartment to buy food, then you might as well be living in Poughkeepsie, and saving $5k a month in rent.

>Was city life not vibrant when rents were 1/3rd the price?

Vibrant may not have been the best choice of words. But there have certainly been periods over the past few decades when life in major cities was more dangerous, grittier, less polished, etc. than it was today. e.g. Bryant Park in the 80s, Some may not consider that a negative.

I always find it interesting how the people who are so strongly against the gentrification caused by the apparently bland and one dimensional tech workers are reluctant to move themselves to cheaper mid-sized cities that ostensibly have more “soul” if that’s what they’re looking for.

Can you expand the acronym HENRYs? Urban dictionary didn't come up with anything for me.

I am a HENRY but my cultural tastes are low for most of my peers standard. McDonalds I'm lovin' it.

What is your images of "hypergentrification"

My experience with any gentrification is a place with almost nothing interesting to do or see gets renewed with new restaurants, bar, venues, etc... so a place that was boring with nothing to do suddenly has new an interesting things to do. Attracting new business brings in other things too like festivals, farmers markets, etc..

That's hardly "... tends to have a sterilizing effect on city life" but maybe you have a different experience.

Indeed; hard to be vibrant if everyone is nothing but working to cover cost of living.

Not all HENRYs are the same, though many do lead upper middle class lifestyles. Some are frugal, most are not -- as is the general population. I speculate a preference for expensive taste in hobbies is developed before earning potential is realized. Though I'm a HENRY, I'm not into golf, expensive cocktails, etc.

What’s a HENRY?

Anecdata here. I just rented out my house in Austin last week. We had 14 people vying to sign a lease, and several wanted to bid above the price we are renting for. The real sticker - 10/14 were moving from SF/LA/NY because they can now work from home. Our rent is above market in Austin, but way below what they are used to paying.

All that to say, you may see the opposite of a slowdown.

My point was that a lot of those trendy bars, restaurants, etc. may no longer exist if a lot of people who can afford to move away. A lot of the elements of city life in say NYC or Boston in the 1990s were a lot different from today.

But, to your point, yeah a return to a more gritty and bohemian version of urban life would be appealing to some.

Just a word of caution as someone who has went from D.C. to small town: It can also be not so good if you come with your previous political beliefs. Big coastal city politics are _very_ unpopular in smaller towns (not here to discuss the merits, just stating the reality). You won't make very many friends. Smaller towns don't have the same issues big cities do, so naturally it will require a different approach and way of thinking.

If we only had some kind of technology that could be used to increase the number of housing units on a given parcel of land, we could increase the supply of housing in a given area until it matched the number of people who wanted to live there.

> The CNN story gives the impression that this is a nationwide trend, but it's really isolated to the housing markets that have been the most unaffordable in recent years.

No surprise. Not all places are equally worth living in. As an American living in Canada I think a 2nd tier California city wouldn't be bad. Maybe not Bakersfield, but Sacramento? Sure.

I don't know about rent, but home prices are spiking in the Kansas City metro as people aren't putting their homes on the market because of uncertainty. The demand is far outstripping the supply. People are getting multiple offers at or above list the same day they go to market and with special add-ons like inspection waivers. It's crazy.

Yeah. I work for a company that's pretty remote-friendly and I've been effectively remote for a while even though I'm officially in an office (though without a desk). So most of us wouldn't really worry too much about moving to a location that wasn't commute-friendly any longer.

But I see concern if you're with someone that hasn't really made any statements or really provided any indications beyond "for the duration of the emergency."

During the housing crisis the exurbs suffered price slumps, but core housing did not. This time the opposite might happen exacerbating DC sprawl. People will work more days remote and housing in Leesburg/Frederick will become more doable/attractive.

I think the DC area has often held up if only because of the nature of the federal government shrinking dramatically is a slower / less likely process.

The pandemic is here for at least 1-2 years in that time many businesses will have perfected WFH/remotely where possible. So I don't think they will go back to previous way of doing things that easily. Another thing is this pandemic also has shown the risk factor of having most of your workforce in one place/city. So even if businesses don't do wfh they would probably go for more satellite offices in smaller cities.

> Once the pandemic ends and employers stop allowing WFH again

We don't know how many companies will require on-site presence.

Some might just allow WFH permanently.

E.g. Twitter already announced that, see: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/12/twitter-c... .

Perhaps. Although the sense I get is that a lot more WFH/remote (admittedly not the same thing) is going to be the new normal at a lot of tech companies.

remote work has a self-reinforcing dynamic. the office is not as attractive when half the employees are not around. people get spoiled by having so much more control of their time. Plus the pandemic is dragging too long already and we are still nowhere near next winter's wave.

The tech industry is a lot broader than some high-profile companies that have made public announcements. My circles admittedly include a lot of people who work remotely anyway but my sense is that this shift is going to be fairly broad and sustained for people who can productively work remotely. (That said, I wouldn't literally move without having some discussion and assurances for whatever they're worth.)

There are no guarantees in life of course but I know multiple people moving from cities to more rural environments.

Some people are long on covid and think it'll go on for more than a year. It's a calculated risk. They could very well be stuck in the middle of nowhere with no one wanting to hire remote workers. Or they could be ahead of the curve.

It is, except there seems to be a sweet spot in medium sized towns where commutes/groceries/activities are all close so no/less driving. If you get too small though you go back to everything being 45 min drive away again like being in the suburbs of a city which is not at all sustainable.

Probably because of shortened commutes. But if many commutes disappear altogether, that could offset it.

Maybe in the urban core. I have friends who live in "Boston" who are in a rough triangle between Danvers, Providence and Worchester. DC is even more insane.

That's fair and the town in question is certainly on the higher end of the price scale. Though, having been involved for unfortunate reasons in Maine coastal property pricing recently, I imagine it's still a lot cheaper than downtown Boston.

There is no evidence for that. No one is fleeing, but we are at the start of a harsh recession, when seeing rents fall isn’t weird at all

What do you mean “caught”? Is there a stipulation on time zone or country? Truly don’t see the problem of bopping off to another country as long as you’re still doing your work and active in the team?

Similar in SF.

Rents for SFH seem about the same as per-COVID, while apartments are dropping.

> The last offer was 3 months free and 2 parking spaces free if we stay for 12 month lease, which comes to 34% discount on the rent including parking.

Someone should make a website to share offers that they received like this. It would be super helpful to better understand your local market and negotiate come renewal time.

For added context and to build off your last point, for years it has been relatively standard for luxury rentals in DTLA to offer somewhere between 4-8 weeks free rent. It might be more appropriate to view this as a single free month with free parking when comparing to other markets.

I'm guessing the freebies are to avoid lowering the actual rent due to Prop 13?

> We just canceled our lease two weeks ago. We had a large apartment in one of the new high-rises in Downtown LA.

> The last offer was 3 months free and 2 parking spaces free if we stay for 12 month lease, which comes to 34% discount on the rent including parking.

That's weird how everytime I discover something new about "free market" in USA, I'm glad to live in Europe.

Having to negotiate your lease like you would with a bag of apples seems insane to me since rents are regulated as are drops or increases in an occurring lease.

to give some context (depending on your rent) but anytime a landlord/PM has to place a new tenant, there are leasing fees/commissions (usually) that equate to between 1/2 to a full month's rent. so if your rent is $1000/month, at a $500 leasing fee to the landlord for a new tenant, they are better off just giving you a $40/month discount (minimum) if you just consider the commission.

they also have to deal with make ready costs, time, and potentially vacancy which any landlord who is objective would gladly say "you want $50/month off your rent? done!" - i would at least.

the only time this doesn't work is in a "hot" rental market where the landlord/PM can charge more for rent and/or have a waitlist (in multifamily scenarios)

Give it a try, you’ve got nothing to loose. And also look around, you might find something better for the same price or cheaper and possibly nearby. Your landlord would loose a lot more if they don’t make a counter-offer, especially if you’ve been a good tenant

Lots of people are moving Upstate from NYC and relatively few new people are moving in: schools are closed. During this time of the year lots of youngsters would normally move in but that is not the case. Rents should drop for sure. Realtors are also bluffing the price up because of a higher omission they get.

Anecdote: I know a realtor who jacked up the price of an apartment in Queens by $250 because it was supposedly under the market price and the landlord priced it wrong. That realtor found the people to move in, but I think what they did was utterly wrong, greedy, etc

So insist, look around and don’t settle for less (in this case for more than you're willing to pay for, and subtract some from that). If there was a good time to bargain now is the time. Be picky! I've seen such oddities in this dirty city, apartments a few feet from the train station - imagine the unbearable noise - which rent for nearly the market price minus 1-200. I've seen apartments with caved in floors rent for almost the market price.

I have no insight into other buildings but management where I live, a pricey 400+ unit in LIC, haven’t budged on anyone’s rent as leases end. Everyone we socialize with (we have a small daughter and there used to be a big crew of babies) has either left or is leaving in the next few months, the garage is less than half full — it’s a ghost town. They’re still raising rents and refused to negotiate with anyone we know. The building is rent stabilized so maybe they fear that lowering the rent will make it impossible for them to hit certain numbers over the next few years?

NY is a weird place where you can see same vacant retail spaces sit on teh market for years and years with landlords unwilling to budge doe to perceived loss of paper building value.

that's essentially the same thing! congrats!!

> Wages from jobs start to increase in an area, some housing development happens, rents go up on those new developments to cover costs but also because their renters can afford it, repeat?

The increased wages (more jobs + better jobs) leads directly to both new housing development AND increased demand for whatever housing currently exists. The latter is more impactful for higher prices than the former.

> but also because their renters can afford it, repeat?

This isn't quite how things work. Most landlords are always going to raise the rent to whatever the market can bear. Of course, how much people can afford does factor into that, but it's not everything.

I can afford to buy milk that costs 10x as it does right now, but I wouldn't actually pay that because I have no reason to when cheap milk still exists. Landlords are able to raise rents when the demand for housing goes up faster than the supply, such that renters don't have better options available.

You seem to be misinterpreting the study. The $9-10 a month number is for the median zipcode in the US, which is unlikely to be an urban area. And it represents the difference for each 1% increase in Airbnb listings. So a median zipcode with 10% more Airbnb listings would see a ~$100 difference in rent from a similar median zipcode.

Assuming that 'a fifth of the overall increase' is correct, that means that a place like SF can attribute at least a few hundred dollars a month in rent increases to AirBnB, as the median rent has increased by almost ~$2k since AirBNB came into existence.

Anecdotal data point:

This asshole was renting 4 separate units in my small apartment complex (despite me constantly pestering my landlord and city council) and a few weeks ago he came by to get all of his furniture and told me he's closed 60% of his bnb's.

>Also, I have to wonder if empty apartments held by investors as ‘safe deposit boxes’ will start to appear on the rental or sale markets if the value drops.

Cities are also making moves that might increase the chances of this. Los Angeles just took steps yesterday to put a vacancy tax on the November 2020 ballot.

I think you're both correct about the increase in supply. There is, of course, also the decrease in demand.

It will be interesting to see if this affects home prices as well. I suppose it depends on how many single / two-family homes are rentals.

they are supposed to be in Vancouver.

So we can expect the population of the valley to shift towards even more career minded over achievers while normal folks flee. Great.