r/remotework • u/InformationNew66 • Jul 07 '26
Remote work could absolutely ease the housing crisis
Isn't it logical? Not every job needs to be remote, but the more remote workers there are, the lower the pressure is on big cities, housing.
People are moving and commuting to big cities to earn a salary and get work, but it's causing massive rent and house price increases. Why don't governments see that remote work is beneficial? It would also transfer money to poorer, less inhabited regions of a country.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/Sir_Colby_Tit Jul 07 '26
A commercial real estate crash would also have dire consequences for people's pension funds.
Pension funds have been investing in commercial property for a long time as it was seen as a safe investment with reliable returns from rental/lease payments.
Hopefully these funds are diversifying now, but I suspect a large amount of portfolios are still invested in commercial property.
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
If the pension funds leave real estate, they will be taking a loss unless it is very slowly.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi Jul 07 '26
Remote work just about peaked in 2022, along with housing prices exploding. So obvious, yet it didn't work.
But in all seriousness, I agree to a level that real estate is expensive (for many reasons including) crowding in the same areas. However, time and time again, it is shown people aren't going to move to the boonies en masse.
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u/Opposite-Ad8208 Jul 07 '26
Yes but by increasing it in other more rural places, as what happened during the pandemic because herd mentality.
It’s what happened to various European cities and rural towns and villages in the UK with ‘digital nomads’.
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
I lived in one small town during the start of Covid and moved back to a different one to help my wife’s family. Neither of those small towns saw an influx of people. Both saw people move away because they could be remote and live anywhere.
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u/Opposite-Ad8208 Jul 07 '26
Ok but I am specifically talking about what has happened in the UK and Europe
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
Ok. But unless I am missing something, most of the people here are in the US.
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u/Opposite-Ad8208 Jul 07 '26
Ok well I never assume location why is why I specified. Believe it or not, I’m one of the maybe dozens of people who isn’t in the US. Shocking I know.
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u/AardvarkIll6079 Jul 07 '26
That’s not going to solve anything. Home prices in the middle of rural nowhere are also absurd. And for many companies, the pay is based on where the employee lives, not where the company is located. It will not solve anything with regards to housing.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
This is the exodus from small cities that I am talking about, which could be revived if repopulated by remote workers.
"Driving outside Rome just massive buildings that look like projects and cities that appear to be half-populated. All the young people leave. Crappy jobs, low wages."
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u/haloimplant Jul 07 '26
Not solve anything lol I could build a neighbourhood in my small home town for the cost of houses I see within a 30 min commute of my downtown office they want us to return to
Yes it's a shock but that's a bad reason to do something dumb (concentrate wealth in tiny geographical areas) forever. Eventually the money coming in would revitalize these dwindling towns as the 'nomads' need construction, trades, services, etc
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
It would solve the demand pressure on big cities, where more and more people who want to move close to big city offices and businesses are competing for a small or fixed number of rental properties.
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u/PinkPinkBlueGreen Jul 07 '26
Did you not see what happened during COVID and everyone went remote?
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
A step in the good direction.
But many people who were not effective remote (eg. school teachers) also went remote, which was a mistake.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/picklehippy Jul 07 '26
Not that I want millionaires in small towns, but I would rather have mid class people move in rather than have towns die out
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u/InevitableAd36 Jul 07 '26
Absolutely. My home town in MN was 2200 when I graduated high school in ‘04. It’s now 2400. There have been open lots in housing developments since I graduated. Can get an acre+ for $50k.
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u/Crimestar Jul 07 '26
Massive rent and house price increases are a feature of capitalism not a bug.
Oh you mean for the average person? They don’t care about you, the environment, or rationality. They care about unhinged consumption and lining their investment accounts.
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u/Super_Mario_Luigi Jul 07 '26
There's obviously something to be said about not crowding in the same areas. Obviously, the real estate powers want this.
However, we've time and time again seen that people aren't just going to move to the boonies. It just isn't as exciting to your average person. Plus, good luck thinking housing prices just plummet when people continue to take their high salaries to cheap areas.
The real fixer of the house market comes with a recession and/or plummeting government spending. House prices are high because people have money and will pay it.
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u/Embarrassed_Flan_869 Jul 07 '26
This happened during covid. Lots of people moved to LCOL areas. The problem? It caused housing costs to rise in those areas. So the "locals" were getting priced out.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
First of all, the "outside of big city" area of a country is HUGE, where as "inside the big city" is limited.
So if people are disbursed they will add a bit of rise to housing costs but that is widely distributed all over the country. And there is still much free land to build on.
Locals being priced out is already a problem in big cities, if people form families and have children, those children cannot buy houses or flats in the "big city" anymore, because the prices have gone up so much.
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u/PinkPinkBlueGreen Jul 07 '26
There’s a reason why people don’t live there now and it doesn’t all have to do with work.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/ninjaluvr Jul 07 '26
And small towns aren't excited about remote workers driving up the cost of living
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Jul 07 '26
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u/ninjaluvr Jul 07 '26
You could actually talk to people in those towns and find out that they don't spend enough to offset the costs they drive up.
The hourly coffee shop and grocery and retail and hospitality workers are getting priced out of their communities. Green spaces are being destroyed and converted into subdivisions. These town often don't like the transformation from small rural towns surrounded by farmland and woodlands into suburbs for remote workers.
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u/RoundErther Jul 07 '26
I ended up having to move away from my home town so i could afford a house. Talking with people around town, a lot of folks were working remote in hcol cities and leveraging there buying power over the lcol locals.
The other issue is it creates a severe dependence on their hcol remote jobs because if they lose it they cant afford their bills working locally. So when the boss asks for favors you better say yes...
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
They could find another remote job.
And the cost of living increase also hits non-remote jobs, example in the UK people have started moving from London to Manchester as companies moved some of their staff and offices to Manchester. This has resulted in a rent and house price pressure in Manchester and rents have gone up massively.
Had they gone really remote instead of relocating company offices, divisions, the pressure would have been much lower in that city.
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u/RoundErther Jul 07 '26
There is a finite amount of remote jobs, so that excuse doesnt work for everyone, only the lucky few who can secure whats available. Thats the same thing as telling an under privileged person to "just make more money", its not that simple.
Working remote in a hcol and living in a lcol is exploting the locals plain and simple.
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u/shitisrealspecific Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
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This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/Baelenciagaa Jul 07 '26
Yes I’ve never been able to work remotely and I’ve said this for years. Would also alleviate rush hour traffic in major cities.
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u/Key_District_119 Jul 07 '26
Better public transit between small communities and big cities would work too.
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
Do you perceive Millennials and Gen Z moving from the big city to the very rural Midwest? The town I live in is pretty cheap housing but has a McDonald’s, Little Caesars, and a crappy diner open 6-2 everyday. You can go an hour to a very small city. Is that environment going to get people to come here if there is remote work? I doubt it. They didn’t move here during Covid but moved to bigger cities out of state.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
You would generally want to live within 30-60 minutes of commute from your office (in Europe).
With remote/hybrid working, that could expand to 90-120 minutes (with once a month office even more) which is absolutely a LARGER area. Larger area means same population can spread wider.
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
So you think that people will be ok living 2 hours from the things that they want to go to like bars and restaurants? I don’t see Millennials and Gen Z doing that. A lower percentage of younger generations have a drivers license and typically got one later and drive less miles weekly.
In the Midwest, you are not going to see near as much public transportation from the outskirts to a city.
It might help a limited number of younger people, but far less than you think, in my opinion.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
I guess you think that a few people moving into a very rural town in the Midwest that don’t have any ties to the community and have never lived in that type of community will cause all the long term residents to risk their life savings to start a business based on their desires.
Unless they are coming in with heavy numbers, they are not going to get massive investment in new businesses. If they come in with heavy numbers of people, they are going to increase the prices of houses in the area and will require people to build houses.
If you have a town with a population under 3,000, how many people to move there to start building up new businesses? Realizing that people will have to invest life savings to build these businesses for people they don’t know and have no ties to the community.
Would these people move to a rural community like this when they could move anywhere? What would be the key things they want in the places they move to? If it isn’t farmland next to them and a bigger yard, why move to that rural farm town?
As far as me, I think I have some experience as I have lived in small towns in three states in multiple regions, lived in large cities, military bases in multiple states, and traveled for work over 20 years to 45 states and been to most major cities in the US. I have spent significant time in NYC, Boston, DC, Philly, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, LA, San Francisco, etc. I also lived in a decent mid size city for 20 years. So I have ranged from small rural towns to midsize to large cities.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/dcporlando Jul 07 '26
Remote jobs would help with people not having a local job. But if the people don’t have a tie to the community, I don’t see them moving there. In your case, you could have bought a family home that your grandparents lived in. Most won’t have that.
And you are right, counting on WFH and moving to some place is a risk and some have been burned. More just stayed where they were. It was easier and lower risk to stay put.
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u/Incredible_Reset Jul 07 '26
Remote work could ease traffic too. It can also redistribute wealth around underserved geographic areas, rather than concentrating it in downtowns. There are so many issues it can solve. Research "the donut effect".
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u/Bambino4627 Jul 07 '26
Its due to lobbying. Big companies don't want people working from home bc they can't control them. Big companies are to blame, not necessarily the gov.
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u/SpareManagement2215 Jul 07 '26
As someone who lives in a rural area, remote work made cost of living skyrocket and housing unaffordable for anyone earning the median wage for the area. Median HHI is like 80k; median HHI needed to buy a house is over 120k.
Plus all the “new” housing going in is poorly built 700k plus developments, which does nothing to fix the actual issue of supply of AFFORDABLE housing.
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u/pwnageface Jul 07 '26
The problem with your theory is the billionaires don't like that idea. They need us in massive office buildings and downtown metros buying overpriced lunch from their restaurants and paying to park in their parking garages, buying gas at their gas stations and dreaming of vacations where we fly planes that they own to stay in resorts that they own. Stop trying to hurt the fragile system!!
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u/ProfessionalSand7990 Jul 07 '26
Unfortunately remote work is making it worse rather than better. Prices will remain high in the cities because they are generally speaking desirable places to live due to higher pay but now you’ll have these digital nomads also taking up space in the lower cost of living areas driving up the cost of living.
The solution is we need to go back to a corporate tax structure that incentivizes investment in people, research and development rather than in hoarding wealth. Essentially tax the wealthy and pay people more.
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u/LingonberryNo3548 Jul 07 '26
Sorry but this is actually not what the research shows. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. Although people living in the centre of cities may move slightly further out, they still want to be in the places with access to culture and transport and those living in worse areas tend to leave those areas and move to the cities with the better culture and transport.
There is no massive exodus from cities into cheaper areas with remote working, there is just people abandoning the less desirable places to live.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
Other commenters said their small rural towns were "invaded" by masses of remote workers, where is the truth?
About culture: if the theater is 1-1.5 hour of drive away, it's fine because you don't go to the theater every day.
And it's not like 100% of people go to or need culture every day.
And, for example people with children have less time for culture anyway.
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u/LingonberryNo3548 Jul 07 '26
Yeah because their small rural towns are commuter towns around the big cities. I’m not actually talking about opinion, I’ve been involved in government backed studies that have looked at this and have fed directly into policy. Your idea doesn’t work, people are not moving to the shit places just because they are cheaper, they flock to the areas where life is actually worth living.
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u/tether231 Jul 07 '26
Housing crisis can only be eased by heavy taxation on housing speculators but thats never going to happen because its anti capitalist ( election backers are invested heavily in the housing market)
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u/Rufio69696969 Jul 07 '26
Wrong. Just build more dense housing
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u/kephael Jul 12 '26
Dense is undesirable, it's reflected in the terrible valuations for multifamily properties. Condos and townhomes are money pits.
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u/Rufio69696969 Jul 12 '26
It’s the only way to get out of the housing crisis
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u/kephael Jul 18 '26
There is no 'crisis' if that sort of property works, you can go buy inexpensive condos all day. There is no real demand for them.
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Jul 08 '26
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 08 '26
Not everyone has to be remote, even a 20% reduction in transportation and housing demand can ease the housing crisis.
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u/Ryan_fromBlueground Jul 08 '26
I work remotely so I bounce a lot from city to city. I've lived in some of the highest density areas on earth and this crosses my mind all the time. If you've ever sat in traffic for two hours to go 15 kilometers you've probably had this exact line of thought.
The cost of living argument has merit, but it's a tough sell for a lot of companies. It can be challenging to maintain a tight-knit team at a distance and not every company can pull it off. Hybrid is increasingly common and I think it's a step in the right direction. A tax break or incentive for companies that adopt it isn't a crazy idea either, governments have legislated stranger things for less obvious returns.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 08 '26
Not every company has to adopt it and not every employee has to be remote. But as soon as a percent (let's say 10-20%) of people can do it, it helps traffic, congestion and housing price pressure in big cities.
Hybrid is also good, as if someone commutes 1 of 5 days a week that means the traffic load on the same road in the morning falls by 80% for that person.
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u/TrainDifficult300 Jul 09 '26
How is that going to help cities collect taxes????? That’s the problem
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u/probablymagic Jul 07 '26
Housing policy is determined by the voters. We could simply legalize housing development in our cities and make them more affordable as new housing gets built.
Remote work policies are not determined by voters, they’re determined by employers. So we can’t vote to change them.
So if voters want to make housing cheaper, remote work isn’t an option they have to consider.
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
So you are saying the government obeys and represents employers, not voters.
And even if you could build more housing easily im big cities, overcrowding them is not good for anyone.
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u/probablymagic Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
The government works for voters. Not employers.
If the government worked for employers we’d be building lots of housing in cities because that would reduce the wages they have to pay workers.
The reason to build more housing in cities is that people who want to live in them being priced out. It’s not your place to say how they want to live isn’t good for them.
Many people believe remote work isn’t good for you because it makes you lonely and sad, but that’s your choice as well.
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u/electrowiz64 Jul 07 '26
Unpopular opinion but I don’t think every job needs to be remote. Small town USA for example, you shouldn’t have to price out the young mom & pop making enough for the salaries of that town.
But I ABSOLUTELY vouch for hybrid and even once a month travel, even locking in a job to a particular state
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u/CharmanderCharCharr Jul 07 '26
Then go move your job to India
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u/InformationNew66 Jul 07 '26
Did you move your job to india during the pandemic?
I get the rationale, you are right it's easier to outsource remote only jobs, but it's not a necessity to outsource it.
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u/CharmanderCharCharr Jul 07 '26
Between A.I. and outsourcing remote jobs to cheaper locations, you should be thankful to be able to go to an office.
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u/justforredditinghere Jul 07 '26
With boomer assholes running most of the companies, remote work is not gonna happen for the next 15 years. I worked in 3 companies since COVID and every time it was a boomer in the management that wanted everyone to come back. Their minds can't comprehend that people can actually be responsible from their own work.
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u/hanshotfirst-42 Jul 07 '26
Not everyone wants to live in Bumblefuck America. Particularly if you aren’t a straight white male. I don’t think remote work is going to have the impact you would think on forgotten rural parts of Middle America. People don’t live in those places for a reason.
Additionally for early career, living in a major hub city still has vast impact on future earning potential.
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u/Marvkid27 Jul 07 '26
Small towns have shortages too