With more and more people working from home these days, real estate agents and journalists have put a name on the migration of highly-paid executives to picturesque hamlets where they can buy a whole lot more house for a million dollars. Aptly named, “Zoom towns,” these more affordable areas offer city dwellers in places like San Francisco and New York, a bit more space and solitude.
According to Bloomberg, these remote enclaves are “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.”
Cities like Truckee (near Lake Tahoe), the Hamptons and Bend, Oregon, were identified as places where real estate prices have gone up and stock has gone down on properties at the upper end of the real estate market.
Analysts at Compass real estate have witnessed similar trends in Sonoma County. According to the June 2020 Bay Area market report, sales of high-end listings priced over $2 million saw the highest growth over last year, nearly tripling from around 13 to 40. Although no decline in stock was noted, Sonoma County’s proximity to San Francisco is a clear draw for techies and executives looking for a little more space for social distancing.
According to a recent report by the investment analysis site, AdvisorSmith, Santa Rosa is the 14th least affordable U.S. city for homebuyers and over one-third (18 out of 50) of the nation’s most unaffordable cities are located in California.
Of the 507 metropolitan areas studied, San Francisco was the least affordable with Santa Cruz coming in second, San Jose in third, Napa in eleventh and Ukiah, surprisingly, in fifteenth.
The study used housing price data from Zillow’s Home Value Index and household income, composition, and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau to calculate a “price-to-income” ratio used to rank the cities from least to most affordable.
For Santa Rosa, with a median household income of $81,395 and a weighted average home price of $619,824, the price-to-income ratio was 7.6 compared to a ratio of 9.7 in San Francisco.
Ukiah did slightly better, with a price-to-income ratio of 7.3. Although homes can be purchased for approximately $200,000 less in Ukiah than in Santa Rosa, the median household income is only $51,830.