Don Young talks to a woman over
Zoom. In the United States, locations such as
The Hamptons, New York;
Cape Cod, Massachusetts;
Aspen, Colorado;
Bethel, Maine; and
Truckee, California — which are usually considered vacation destinations — saw large spikes in people moving there. Truckee for instance saw a 23% increase. On the other hand, cities such as
San Francisco,
Seattle, and
New York City, saw rent levels plunge. Although the trend was already underway, the sudden rapid migration accelerated it, and led to calls to carefully manage the situation to avoid the places being "loved to death". Many of the areas have tight housing regulations which prevent construction booms, driving up prices for houses already built, as in
the Hamptons, which saw a rise in housing prices of up to 25%, and Truckee, which is up 50%. Not all areas experiencing booms see it as a problem, however, and some have even launched initiatives specifically designed to appeal to remote workers. The Zoom town relocation phenomenon peaked in the pandemic's initial years; states like Montana saw extreme net-positive migration flows in 2021. This trend started to shift in later years from initially popular mountain towns to lower-cost, mid-sized cities in the Southeast. According to the Canadian magazine ''
Maclean's'', population-related statistical data in Canada "shows that from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, Toronto and Montreal posted record population losses, while Halifax grew the second-fastest of any major urban area, and Moncton also grew faster than average. Housing prices have soared as people across Canada buy property in the Maritimes sight unseen through virtual tours, with Fredericton’s U-Haul dealer struggling to keep up with all the people renting moving trucks in Ontario and Quebec and trying to drop them off at its lot." In Europe, some countries such as
Italy,
Romania,
Poland,
Latvia, and
Bulgaria, which had experienced "
brain-drain" in preceding years, found young professionals return home as they began working remotely, a trend which was further encouraged by some governments in the form of tax breaks for returning citizens. Other places have set up
working visa programs specifically for remote workers, such as
Anguilla,
Barbados,
Georgia,
Estonia, and
Croatia. Following the same trend, Italy began paying people to move to its more remote villages in order to revitalize them. One study early in the pandemic of 30 countries around the world showed that countries in the so-called "
developed world" had the easiest shift to working remotely, with
Luxembourg coming in at the top, while
Nigeria was at the bottom.
Richard Florida and Adam Ozimek wrote in an article in
The Wall Street Journal that the shift is expected to have significant economic implications. Companies that have already announced that remote work will become permanent within their corporation include
Twitter,
Siemens,
Shopify,
Facebook, and
State Bank of India. 74% of venture capitalists and venture-backed entrepreneurs expect their companies to remain remote for the majority of employees, if not all of them. Other possible effects of people moving to smaller towns include changes in transportation habits, as people drive cars less and feel it less of a necessity to own them, they may opt for
ridesharing options if available, and may even increase the demand for
self-driving cars. ==Examples of Zoom towns and regions==