- Redfin found that homebuyers' incomes rose in cities like Boise and Austin as high earners moved in.
- It found that while median incomes in these spots skyrocketed, home prices often rose twice as fast.
Remote work has made homes more expensive.
The logic is, by now, familiar: An employee formerly bound to one place by a 9-to-5 job becomes a remote worker. The employee moves to a new location where their salary goes further. The new location's home prices rise as these wealthier residents arrive. Locals, often those with lower salaries, are increasingly shut out of the housing market.
A Redfin analysis published last week broke down the US cities that experienced the starkest increases in the typical homebuyer's income from 2019 to 2021. The analysis, which looked at the 100 most populous US metro areas, spotlighted where higher-paid workers relocating had an outsized effect.
Separately, Redfin told Insider that Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago were the top origin cities of people seeking to relocate to some of the places with the largest percentage increases in median homebuyer income. This finding backs up the idea that remote workers fled pricey coastal cities for less expensive destinations where people make less.
The destinations that Redfin found were most affected by high-earning relocators dotted the West and the South.
Boise, Idaho, experienced the biggest jump in median homebuyer income from 2019 to 2021, Redfin found. In that time, the median homebuyer income grew by 24.1%, to $98,000 from $79,000. The median home price also shot up, surging by 53%, to $485,000 in December 2021 from $316,000 in December 2019.
Austin, Texas, followed Boise, with the median homebuyer income increasing by 19.1%, to $137,000, and the median home price growing by 48%, to $476,000.
Four Florida cities — Cape Coral, North Port, West Palm Beach, and Miami — came next, with median homebuyer-income growth of 18.5% (to $96,000), 18.5% (to $109,000), 17% (to $110,000), and 16.9% (to $104,000) and median home-price growth of 48%, 47%, 33%, and 38%.
The following map shows median homebuyer-income growth from 2019 to 2021 for the 100 places that were part of Redfin's analysis:
Redfin said it based its report on an analysis of median household incomes of homebuyers who took out a mortgage, omitting buyers who purchased a home in all cash, or without financing.
Home prices grew even faster than residents' salaries
This part hurts.
Redfin found that in each of the 10 areas with the biggest percentage increases in median homebuyer income, home prices rocketed up at a faster rate than residents' incomes.
That means residents with salaries that might have been considered average before the pandemic would have an even harder time affording the average home.
"For white-collar workers earning high salaries, remote work is a huge financial boon. It enables them to move from a tech center like San Francisco to a more affordable part of the country like Boise or Salt Lake City, get more home for their money and save some for a rainy day," Sheharyar Bokhari, a senior economist at Redfin, said in the report. "It can have the opposite effect on locals in those destinations — especially renters — who are watching from the sidelines as home prices skyrocket while their income stays mostly the same."
The narrative is changing in some of these pandemic boomtowns, however, as rising mortgage rates make homes even more expensive. Another analysis from Redfin, published in July, found that more than 60% of home sellers in Boise dropped their asking prices in June.
Redfin noted that the housing markets in Boise, Austin, Cape Coral, and North Port were among those that cooled the quickest during the first half of 2022.
"Partly because of soaring home prices, Phoenix and Miami have some of the highest inflation rates in the country," Bokhari said in the latest report. "That will eventually diminish the financial advantage of moving to these places for out-of-towners."
Bokhari added that inflation also affects locals, squeezing their budgets for essentials like food and diminishing their ability to save for down payments.
Are you well paid by local standards and did you recently buy your first home? Was the process made more difficult by the changing population of your area? Do you find yourself unable to buy a home in your area because of newcomers or other reasons? If this applies to you and you want to share your story, reach out to Zoe Rosenberg at zrosenberg@insider.com.