Tech Workers Take to the Mountains Increasing Demand for Real Estate in Mountain Towns
Posted by Negar Chevre on Sunday, November 1st, 2020 at 1:20pm.
Tech staffers from the Bay Area are relocating across the country, bringing to their new locales the woes and upsides that go with some of America’s highest-paying jobs.
Employers including Facebook, Twitter and Stripe Inc. have liberated their staffers, allowing them to work from wherever they want. As a result, some are leaving the Bay Area to live in Western mountain communities that they had already been drawn to like Boise, Idaho, and Park City, Utah. The transplants are adding more wealth and business to their new hometowns but also widening wage gaps and raising real-estate prices.
In the ski-resort town of Park City, Utah, Casey Metzger, owner of the Top Shelf mobile bartending and consulting service, said all the newcomers have been a boon for local restaurants with outdoor dining, bike stores, guiding companies and construction companies. However, they also drive up costs for properties, he said.
“If we don’t pay attention to low-income housing, we’re going to be in trouble,” said Mr. Metzger.
Tiffany Fox, vice president of marketing for Summit Sotheby’s International Realty, said that in the past three months, she has had a handful of people knock on her front door to ask if she’s open to selling her house. (She’s not.)
She said every weekend in town now feels like the Fourth of July—good for some but not as good for others. While the real-estate market pulled in $1.49 billion from July through September, residents are posting comments on the local Facebook group expressing concerns about the newcomers, she added. “People are mourning Park City,” said Ms. Fox.
Jon Jessup, who founded the e-commerce software startup Cloud Conversion in Park City 12 years ago, said every time he takes his children to the park he meets tech workers who recently landed from San Francisco and New York. He recently played golf with a fellow ex-Oracle Corp. employee.
Mr. Jessup had already had a couple of recent transplants ask his advice on starting companies of their own in Park City. But Covid-19 and the work-from-anywhere era have caused him to rethink his own operation: He’s closing his Park City office and making his workforce fully remote. He also thinks anyone luring talent to Park City will have an uphill battle, as far as salary goes, because of the rising cost of housing. “They’d have to make $300,000 a year to be able to buy a house here.”