[EForEndeavour]

This makes sense to me, but my impression (not backed by hard data mind you, just years of glancing at housing prices) is that the step increase in remote work triggered by COVID simply caused housing (i.e., residential space) prices to skyrocket in most places relative to their pre-COVID trends, surely due in part to the sudden influx of people who could make longer or no commutes work for their remote jobs. Metropolitan rents did see a temporary drop that lasted through something like mid-2020 through mid-2021, but housing prices continue to set all-time highs.

[hiAndrewQuinn]

Anecdotally I definitely saw the same patterns. If I had more time I would dive deep into the economics papers generated by this natural experiment, because I would be fascinated to see what kinds of real estate ripples it caused.

Intuitively, I don't think most fully remote workers who moved moved to genuinely remote areas - maybe to smaller cities, and the outskirts of those smaller cities at that, but the amenities of any city above 100,000 or so genuinely are quite nice to have handy. I wonder if rural areas saw much of an uptick in absolute, but even in relative, terms.