Writings

The Great COVID-19 Fled



2020 was a really important year that is for sure going down in history, as we went through (a still on-going) pandemic with a scale that we hadn’t seen since the Middle Ages. It has had such a tremendous impact in our lives that it started re-shaping a fundamental fact of human civilization: We like to live around us, in big settlements. But that is no more: Say hello to The Great COVID-19 Fled. Thousands are putting up their big-city apartments for sale and are moving to the countryside. In this essay we will take a look at why this is happening and what it means for the post-COVID world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the fundamentals about how we work, since we all went from meeting in an office space to working from home, and because of that people began wondering if living in big cities had any benefit. And the answer is a hard no: In a recent survey conducted by Gallup and published by the World Economic Forum, almost half of all adults living in the USA when asked “if you could live anywhere where you wished, where would you prefer to live” (Gallup, 2021) said that they would prefer to live in a small town our rural area, a nine percentage-point increase from 2018.

And they aren’t just thinking of it, they are actually doing it. According to a NPR’s The Indicator from Planet Money podcast episode published in July of last year, in a market where one out of five US citizens are unemployed, traffic on the real estate website Redfin is up about 40 percent: “There’s unemployment, people protesting […] Should we hire more real estate agents? And the answer so far has been yes” (Vanek Smith & García, 2020, 02:36) says Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin. And why is that? Because people are re-thinking the value of living in a big city. If everything is closed due to the lockdown, and people are now working from home: Why not move?

And what’s driving people to sell their homes and move across the country? The first one is space. “The main driver is that people want more space, prompting higher sales of luxury, suburban and rural homes.” (Popken, 2020) said Daryl Fairweather, CFO of Redfin in an NBC news report in December of last year. But that’s not the only reason. In an article published by the Washington Post, the authors explain it further: “For some, it’s a chance to be closer to family […] And for many others it’s not really a decision at all, but a necessity in the face of growing job losses and still sky-high rents.” (Kelly & Lerman, 2020).

How is the situation now in 2021, you may ask? Well, many big companies are thinking of going back to the office. A The Verge report, published in June of this year contains a leaked email where Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook asks employees to come to the office 3 days a week and work from home just two days a week… Only to be met with the public outcry of the company’s employees in a public letter that stated, “Over the last year we often felt not just unheard, but at times actively ignored.” (Schiffer, 2021b) and ended up with Apple backing down and pushing the back to the office to sometime in 2022.

People are moving in the thousands in search of a better life. In a world of lockdowns, living close to a café or your place of work doesn’t really matter as now your house is your café and your place of work, so that fancy (and costly) small apartment in the city suddenly doesn’t look appealing anymore. While some are trying to go back to the office, the general of the populace doesn’t agree with that view and wants to stay where they are now, where things are cheaper, and space is greater. Will we ever go back to the office, as back in the old days? That remains to be seen. For now, The Great COVID Fled is here to stay.

References

  • Gallup. (2021, January 5). Country Living Enjoys Renewed Appeal in U.S. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/328268/country-living-enjoys-renewed-appeal.aspx
  • Kelly, H., & Lerman, R. (2020, June 1). The pandemic is making people reconsider city living, trading traffic for chickens. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/01/city-relocate-pandemic/
  • Popken, B. (2020, December 31). Millions of Americans moved during the pandemic — and most aren’t looking back. NBC News; NBC. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/millions-americans-moved-during-pandemic-most-aren-t-looking-back-n1252633
  • Roper, W. (2019, January 19). COVID-19 is pushing Americans out of cities and into the country. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/01/rural-life-cities-countryside-covid-coronavirus-united-states-us-usa-america/
  • Schiffer, Z. (2021a, June 2). Apple asks staff to return to office three days a week starting in early September. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465846/apple-employees-return-office-three-days-week-september
  • Schiffer, Z. (2021b, June 4). Apple employees push back against returning to the office in internal letter. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/4/22491629/apple-employees-push-back-return-office-internal-letter-tim-cook
  • Vanek Smith, S. & García, C. (Hosts). (2020, July 29). The Coronavirus Housing Boom [Audio podcast episode]. In The Indicator from Planet Money. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/896942333/the-coronavirus-housing-boom