New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco suggests that remote work is driving housing and rental prices up.
Because more people commuting less and working from home more, the cost of finding a space that can accommodate both work-related and personal needs has soared.
According to the research, housing prices grew 24% in the two years ending in November of 2021, with 60% of that increase being attributed to remote work.
“The transition to remote work because of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a key driver of the recent surge in housing prices,” said economists Augustus Kmetz and John Mondragon of the San Francisco Fed, and Johannes Wieland of the University of California, San Diego.
The authors also found that for every 1% increase in remote work, there is a 0.9% increase in housing prices.
Pairing inflation with the fact that studies support remote work’s indefinite persistence, the future of the residential real estate market could be uncertain at best, and totally unaffordable at worst.
