The Pandemic & The Irrelevance of Place
Rent in some cities has collapsed, and boomed in others, because of the pandemic.
The basic summary is not that surprising. Rents in wealthy coastal cities who were reliable job magnets have been hardest hit (San Francisco rents have declined by 27%, NY, Seattle, and Boston have seen rents decline by almost 20%). In contrast, Boise Idaho has seen a boom of 12% in rents.
Why this is happening is more or less obvious. People were willing to put up with ridiculously high rents in exchange for access to a high-paying job market. The pandemic forced everyone to engage in remote work, and generally the wealthier someone is the more likely they are able to work remotely. The correlation is basically linear, with only 15% of those earning less than $25k working remotely, while $150k and above reaching rates of 70% and more. Why bother paying $3k a month to live with roommates in San Francisco if you don't have to anymore?
I don't believe this is only a temporary shift. As illustration, the court system I operate in, perhaps the most conservative of mainstream institutions, has already permanently changed its court rules to encourage defendants to appear either remotely or through their attorneys. This is a huge shift, because previously a significant majority of my time spent in court was in crowded courtrooms with dozens of defendants who had to wait for several hours literally just for their lawyer to ask for a continuance. It was a momentous waste of time for everyone involved. Nowadays, I just ask for continuances remotely by email, and my client doesn't even have to appear for the majority of hearings. The fact that the court system has adopted this stance permanently leads me to think there will be significant inertia to reverting the adoption of remote work.
I'm inclined to think this is mostly a good thing, but not without some pain in the process. Instead of needlessly cramming entire segments of an industry into municipalities who are (for one reason or another) extremely reticent to build the requisite infrastructure to support it (which includes housing), people would now have far more options available to them. I think the reluctance around remote working was perhaps driven by an irrational fear that workers would engage in too much shirking while on the clock. This undoubtedly still happens as a lot of jobs are bullshit, but maybe getting forced into accommodating remote work evaporated some of the pretense that artificially propped up these play-acting jobs.
If you're wealthy or have a job that requires you to mostly just sit at a computer, you'll be fine. If you're a landlord in a wealthy city, or if you're in an industry reliant on the knock-on effects of catering to highly-paid professionals (restaurants, bars, dry cleaners, etc), be very worried if you haven't been shut down already.