[hiphipjorge]

Does anyone know a lot of personally who have personally done this?

One of my friends is travelling+working across western states, but he's the only person I know. Another friend tried going to Truckee (Tahoe) and eventually ended up back with his parents after a couple of months.

So far, I would guess this is happening but to a much lesser extent that what most think. It'll definitely be a trending in that direction though.

[vl]

The problem is that supply at such places is quite limited (why would there be excess build up if there was no demand?), so it takes just small increase of demand to dry up supply and drive up prices.

I know few people who are unsuccessfully try to buy "non-metro" houses: either prices are to high, or deals closed in just couple hours of property being listed.

[throwaway0a5e]

The people you know are likely constraining their search to only the kinds of places white collar urbanites find "nice".

There is no shortage of non-dilapidated double wides and 1500ft^2 houses in rural areas.

What there is a shortage of is recently constructed nicely optioned turnkey 1500-3500ft^2 houses. Basically if you're looking for the kind of house you find in an inner suburb with good schools in BFE it'll either be hard to find or expensive.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Reliable, fast internet is less of a nice-to-have and more of an absolute requirement when the whole family is going to be on Zoom calls all day.

Rural areas often don't have that. DSL is usually asymmetric, and doesn't have anywhere near the required upload bandwidth.

[serjester]

We just bought an RV and plan on living out of it and chasing powder across Colorado. Always been a dream, I figured now’s the time to do it. Curious how crowded the slopes will be though.

[bmj]

I can't speak to skiing, but many rock climbing areas have been feeling the strain from large crowds this year. It's a bit of a perfect storm, though: a combination of the reality of COVID and remote working plus the explosion of urban climbing gyms over the past few years exposing more and more people to the sport.

I've been using my work flexibility to avoid the popular crags and boulderfields on the weekends, but on the rare weekends I have been out, the popular crags at the New River Gorge have been absolutely packed.

[alextheparrot]

Skiing might be a bit better - most of the passes are going with a reservation system at least at the beginning.

[serjester]

That’s interesting. I’m hoping that the people not getting on planes right now will balance out the influx of locals / zoomers.

[scsilver]

Have you done this before. The I70 resorts, Summit County, Eagle County, and even the Roaring fork valley make it really difficult to park overnight. Even in summer where dispersed camping is available, it's not a no brainer affair. You might have luck out in the far west like Silverton, Telluride or Durango.

[1-more]

I'm seeing people decamp from NYC to their parents's and pay their school loans phenomenally fast, but not so much going elsewhere solo.

[2trill2spill]

I live in Salt Lake city for the winter and work remotely so I can snowboard, but I was doing this prior to the pandemic. I also have a friend who lives in Austin, Texas normally, whos planning on moving to Colorado for the winter to snowboard as well. Those are just anecdotes, so who knows how prevalent this trend is.

[xur17]

I would love to do this, but lodging near slopes tends to be quite expensive - do you stay a bit further away, or have you had success sharing a house with a group of people doing the same thing?

[2trill2spill]

Salt Lake city is quite affordable and im ~45 minutes to Brighton, Park city, Solitude, Snowbird, etc, excluding traffic. But pretend i didn't say that, traffic in the canyons already sucks, and more people will only make it worse.

[moltar]

Try Montreal? A great and affordable city. Only 1.5 hour drive to Mont Treblant.

[2trill2spill]

Montreal? For Snowboarding? No offense, but snowboarding conditions in the western United States and western Canada is so much better than Montreal. For example Mont Treblant only gets 164 inches of snow on an average year[1], while Snowbird, Alta, Brighton and Solitude in Utah average 500 inches a year.

[1]: https://officialmonttremblant.com/the-mountain/snow-guns/

[2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/lists/skiing/10...

[moltar]

I didn't say it was the best. Just an option. OP wanted an affordable city with skiing. Montreal fits the bill here :)

[PaulDavisThe1st]

A truly great and affordable city, that is also hot and humid in the summer and then frigid in the winter.

[xur17]

I'll keep that in mind for the future. Not sure they'll let me in this year.

[Spooky23]

People are definitely moving away from NYC.

My aunt and uncle live near Binghamton, NY and their new neighbors are high income people (a Googler + Attorney) who plan to stay for a year or two. Fixing up the house and putting a pool in is still less than what their Manhattan apartment cost.

[Simulacra]

We bought a home in Vermont when it became clear neither of us were going back to the office. Now we’re planning to divide time there, six on six off.

[kylebarron]

I'm moving to a Colorado ski town next week on a 6-month winter lease. I had the flexibility to do it, so it was kinda a no-brainer for me.

[DominikPeters]

I changed jobs in August, and the new job is in a high rent city, where I'll pay $75/night for a 1br apartment (i.e. $2300/mo). We're all remote until at least January, so I decided to not rent and instead work while traveling -- you can live in hotels and AirBnBs quite comfortably in many places on a $75/night budget.

[serjester]

I recommend looking into long term Airbnb options too. It can be a pretty significant savings if you stay somewhere for a few weeks.

[driverdan]

You can buy a very nice home in most of the US for $2300/m.

[jborden13]

Yea I moved to Colorado from Texas two weeks ago. Was planning to move to Central America pre-covid, though - so my move wasn't covid-related or initiated though definitely impacted.

[jdhn]

I would like to do this, but my big (and therefore slow moving) company didn't release any guidance on when we were coming back to the office, so I just renewed my lease for a full year.

That being said, when we're scheduled to go back (next June), I plan on trying to work completely remotely, and then attempt to travel in a much more extensive way.

[blonde_ocean]

Right here with you. I don’t even know when I’m supposed to go back into the office, but I definitely thought about taking out an AirBnB for a couple months in somewhere like Provo.

[dmix]

I took half work Airbnb’s throughout the pandemic. Worked great for me.

The only problem is finding good internet. All they’ll tell you is if that have wifi or not even consistently working wifi. I learned quickly You gotta research this part deeply yourself.

[jdhn]

The WiFi thing is definitely an issue. I've found good results on AirBnB by filtering for business reviews. I figure that business travellers are going to hold a quality WiFi connection in higher regard than someone who's just travlling for fun.

[ASinclair]

So far I've seen friends move to Tahoe, Sacramento, San Diego and (temporarily) to Colorado from the Bay Area. Mostly when given the green light to go remote permanently but in at least one case they bought a house with no promise of long-term remote work.

[kelp]

This summer I bought a house in Tahoe (Carnelian Bay) and am now going through some mostly DIY renovations, with a little local contractor help here and there.

We also still have a place in San Francisco, but we're spending 70-80% of our time in Tahoe.

We spent the whole month of June here, and when we booked our place to stay, Placer county was not allowing short term rentals, so we booked for a full month to get over the threshold. While we were here, restaurants and other things opened back up.

About mid-June we started looking at houses. We made one offer for asking price, and got it accepted, right at the end of June. Overall I think we were fairly lucky. There were some stories of places going for substantially over asking price, which is rare for the area. But the largest impact was that housing supply is low, and houses moved really quickly.

It's typical for houses in this area to sit on the market for 3-6 months and sell for right around or slightly under asking price. This summer we saw a house go up on Zillow, on Wednesday, and we hemmed and hawed about it until Friday, then told our agent we wanted to tour it. The house was already off the market by that time. We saw plenty of places hit there market, and go into contract within 2-5 days.

We looked at several that we're real fixers. Like an 1100 square foot A-Frame that had a terrifying set of disclosures, probably needed at least a down to the studs renovation. All the electrical replaced, plumbing replaced, etc. Everything was DIY, not to code, etc. It sold in a handful of days for at least $500K, and certainly needed another $150K in work.

The place we did end up getting, we only got to see because our agent knew the seller and the selling agent. We got to tour it before it hit the multiple listing service and we had an offer in before it actually went on the market. It did hit the MLS for a few hours, but the buyer ended up wanting an easy sale, so accepted or asking price offer.

This kind of quick sale is typical for the Bay Area, but not at all for Tahoe.

I'm not keeping as close an eye on the market now, but overall asking prices are up, and people are still buying quickly. Also all the local contractors are very busy.

The other issue (and we're part of this problem) is that a lot of former rental houses are being put on the market, so locals are having quite a hard time finding a place to rent, and having to end up in places like Reno, which is roughly a 45-60 minute drive away. SFGate has an article about this exact issue here: https://www.sfgate.com/renotahoe/article/Bay-Area-transplant...

The other anecdote is that up until a couple of weeks ago it was still quite busy in town. People working at the local grocery store were commenting that it's the busiest shoulder season they've ever seen. Typically this time of year, this place is nearly a ghost town.

Both me and my partner have been working remotely since the start of March and expect to continue at least well into next year. Perhaps permanently.

[enigmo]

> The other issue (and we're part of this problem) is that a lot of former rental houses are being put on the market, so locals are having quite a hard time finding a place to rent, and having to end up in places like Reno, which is roughly a 45-60 minute drive away.

This has been happening for years, at least around South Lake Tahoe, due to rentals being put up on AirBnB. I've talked to numerous locals over the years while on ski trips and they've all said the same thing: if they're renting it's usually in Nevada and they drive to town every day. During big storms a lot of folks can't even make it to work at all.

[disgruntledphd2]

This is basically happening all over the world in tourist spots. For example, there's a town called Dingle in Ireland which is super beautiful and beloved by (mostly American) tourists.

Anyone who doesn't already own a house there and works in any of the businesses is unable to rent, and they normally commute from one of the larger towns, 40-60 mins away (over pretty bad roads, up and down mountains). It's gotten so bad that businesses are considering putting on buses for their staff.

And if you want to hear a 45 minute rant, mention AirBnB to anyone who lives in Santa Cruz and doesn't own property :)

[vict00ms]

I don't know people who have done this but I know people that are impacted by people that have (e.g. small towns along the Hudson river being inundated by people fleeing NYC).

[leaguedreams]

I'm planning on spending the winter months in Colorado and Utah. Monthly stays on Airbnbs were extremely cheap a few months ago.