Why we’re never going back to the office full time: “The cities that had the longest commute time are struggling to get their folks back. And here in Toronto, the number one issue for the tech community is the commute time. And they can’t get people back” thestar.com/business/2023/… "In January, a Colliers survey of its commercial real estate clients found 62% of companies say they plan to operate under a hybrid model going forward"

Housing Costs, Not Taxes, Drive Migration out of New York: "On average, savings from lower housing costs are 15 times greater than savings from taxes" fiscalpolicy.org/housing-costs-… Along the same lines "In Pursuit of Affordable Housing: The Migration of Homebuyers within the US—Before & After the Pandemic" freddiemac.com/research/insig…

So much Rust Belt in the Sun Belt: “In the late ‘80s & early ‘90s, Chattanooga was a dying city of industrial companies leaving,” said Mayor Tim Kelly, a resident who was reluctant to come home after attending Columbia University in New York marketwatch.com/story/gig-city… “We were the Rust Belt of the South to iron ore & steel but it was dying away,” said Charles Wood. CEO of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce

Suburban boom loop: Even if workers aren't fully remote, they're not going into offices 5 days a week. That makes the suburbs appealing, says Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the NAR. "A little bit of a longer commute is not a hindrance" axios.com/2023/05/13/us-… America’s Next Great Restaurants Are in the Suburbs: “St. Charles is not just the white suburbs where we grew up. It is becoming globalized like everywhere else” nytimes.com/2022/01/18/din…

"In February 2020, the month before the pandemic lockdown, downtown San Francisco already faced many of its current challenges, including traffic congestion, patchy transit service, & insufficient housing" spur.org/news/2023-05-1… "The city’s office market was incredibly expensive, partly because of Proposition M caps on how much office space could be built. The limited office inventory restricted the types of businesses that could afford to operate downtown"

"After increasing from 3.2 million in 2010 to 4.6 million in 2019, the number of super commuters who travel 90 minutes or more each way to work has fallen back to 3.1 million as of 2021, driven by the widespread adoption of remote work" apartmentlist.com/research/numbe… "Notably, the San Francisco metro itself fell out of the top 10 between 2019 & 2021. The number of super commuters in the San Francisco metro fell by 67% from 2019 to 2021 – the nation’s second sharpest decline"

NYC Population Estimates: "In Chart 9 we show the Census Bureau’s population estimates according to three vintages" comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/newsl… "Chart 10 reports estimates of net international migration into NYC ...The [2022] estimate is based on responses to Census’ American Community Survey & was largely prior to the arrival of buses bringing asylum seekers to NYC from the southern border"

Why Americans are leaving big cities behind: "The data suggest that there has been a significant shift out of the biggest cities down the urban hierarchy to those small metro & what we call micro-politan areas" wbur.org/onpoint/2023/0… "Vermont is a classic example where people arrive with accumulated wealth, they bid up property & there is an ensuing shift in the class composition of these rural environments. That's not dissimilar to what's gone on in Park Slope"

Brief thread putting the current NYC exodus in historical perspective: "Since 1975, out-migration from NYC has remained consistently high whereas in-migration has increased steadily" (PDF): nyc.gov/assets/plannin… For outmigration, the high-water mark is (indeed) 1975-1980. I predict that 2020-2025 will exceed that low point for NYC. The pandemic exodus will be the worst outflow in 50 years. /2

Big city restaurants & bars are missing office workers’ spending on Mondays & Fridays: "In-person work days declined the most, 37%, in Washington, compared with pre-pandemic levels, followed by Atlanta at 34.9% and Phoenix at 34.1%" cnbc.com/2023/02/24/big… "Especially because the census tracts that had increases in foot traffic are more of the suburbs ...what that’s implying is that employment seems to be doing better in the restaurants, bars, & retail trade in these less dense census tracts"

Millions of US Workers Are Still Missing After The Pandemic. Where Did They Go? “It’s a very confusing picture. We don’t even have good facts to work with” bloomberg.com/news/articles/… "Harvard University economist Raj Chetty & his colleagues tracked another category of missing workers in a recent paper: low-wage service workers who were displaced from their jobs early in the pandemic & never came back"

"Office vacancy rate exceeded 10% in many big metro areas. For instance, the office vacancy rate was over 15% in Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, DC, & Chicago. Conversely, smaller areas experienced lower vacancy rates" nar.realtor/blogs/economis… "Specifically, the top 10 worst-performing areas generally continue to be tech hubs that had high office vacancy rates even before COVID-19"

“Getting laid off is one thing, but being disowned by your family after 18 years is another. And that’s what Google did to us. People I worked with for 10 years are not allowed to bring us in for lunch to say goodbye” nytimes.com/2023/02/23/opi… "Larry Page said, if only we could have two million people working at this company, think of all the good we can do in the world. Think of all the problems we can solve that governments can’t"

Yankeedom archipelago washingtonmonthly.com/2023/02/23/how… With all due respect to Halford Mackinder, American Heartland is only a mythological landscape

UK: "low unemployment leads to relatively few forced sales, meaning prices hardly budge but transactions stall, housebuilding stops & cash-rich investors swoop in to outbid those on lower incomes" ft.com/content/07e005… New report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation“: We have a kind of folk memory of the house price crash of the early 90s,” says Toby Lloyd, co-author of the report. “But we haven’t realised how much things have changed since then”

Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, said the Bay Area’s exorbitant prices before Covid made it particularly vulnerable to last year’s market correction: “It’s arguably the weakest housing market in the country” wsj.com/articles/san-f… Nina Hatvany of Compass real estate: “San Francisco suffers terribly from the press it’s received ...People are getting new jobs. There’s talk of AI being the new thing. I’m not saying it’s going to be wonderful, but the slide seems to have stopped”

Inside Taiwanese Chip Giant, a US Expansion Stokes Tensions: “The most difficult thing about wafer manufacturing is not technology. The most difficult thing is personnel management. Americans are the worst at this” nytimes.com/2023/02/22/tec… How Arizona Is Positioning Itself for $52 Billion to the Chips Industry: "Arizona, which is vying for subsidies along with Texas, New York & Ohio, may have a head start on the action. The state has been home to semiconductor makers since the 1940s" nytimes.com/2023/02/22/tec…

Word of caution, the AGI exodus from large counties is the status quo: "The pandemic fueled another wave of American migration, not only to the Sun Belt, but to outdoor-oriented communities across the West" bizjournals.com/washington/new… Top 10 in terms of avg AGI per filer to Vermont counties

"Recent immigrants to California are among the most educated residents of the state. A majority (52%) of working-age immigrants (ages 25–64) arriving over the past ten years have a bachelor’s or graduate degree" ppic.org/blog/californi… "These trends are partly a response to the strong job market for college graduates in California. Immigrants make up 27% of the state’s workers ages 25–64 with a bachelor’s degree, & an even higher share (36%) of those with a graduate degree"

Office Demand Turns Negative [after 4 consecutive quarters of positive demand] in Q4: "Economic uncertainty, coupled with occupier downsizings due to hybrid work, caused leasing activity to drop by 23% quarter-over-quarter and by 36% year-over-year" cbre.com/insights/figur… Tech’s grip on largest office leases loosens: "The finance & insurance industry ousted tech last year for the lion's share of the largest 100 office leases in the U.S., per a new report from CBRE" axios.com/2023/02/06/tec…

"The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue region & the Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton area are leading the West Coast on net move-outs, the data shows. According to [the NAR] analysis, San Francisco saw less migration away from the city in 2022 than either Seattle or Portland"

https://twitter.com/lehnerjw/status/1622336280712581120

The NAR analysis: nar.realtor/blogs/economis…