Home prices in her new hometown spiked about 20% in the last year. MORRIS: To Williams Bay, Wis., a town of about 2,600 on a small lake. I moved from Seattle, which had been seeing price growth for quite some time, to a rural part of Wisconsin. MORRIS: And prospective buyers like Yoder are driving up rural home prices, according to Daryl Fairweather, an economist with the real estate brokerage Redfin.ĭARYL FAIRWEATHER: People are moving towards places that are more affordable because of remote work that they wouldn't have considered before. And Velasquez's brother-in-law Craig Yoder says that coming from California, they're wielding substantial buying power in rural Missouri.ĬRAIG YODER: We have three good incomes and three properties that we can sell in California for a big - I own my house outright. They're approaching retirement and say that California has become too expensive and, for them, too liberal. MORRIS: Velasquez, along with his wife and her siblings, are shopping for property here. VELASQUEZ: You know why? People like us coming out here is why you've got a shortage on homes. MORRIS: On a recent morning, the small real estate office on the square in Osceola is full of Californians like Robert Velasquez. It's smaller than it was a century ago, and home prices were in the basement for decades before the pandemic hit. ![]() Take Osceola, Mo., a town of 900 an hour beyond the outskirts of Kansas City. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports.įRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: For years, the runup in housing prices passed by vast stretches of so-called flyover country. “They didn’t need a perfect house, and they’re not afraid to tackle a big renovation.You can usually find real estate in rural towns for less than what you would pay to live in a city, but the pandemic has sparked high housing prices across the country in rural places that don't usually see them. Their ability to work with “whatever the circumstances are” set them apart from typical buyers, said Deborah Hitz, the couple’s real estate agent, who owns Habitat Real Estate Group, in Stone Ridge, N.Y. “We want the house that no one else wants.” “We were always drawn to ugly-duckling houses,” Ms. Burk’s tools and a carpentry workshop, enough acreage to have separation from neighbors, and some natural beauty - a stream, or maybe mountain views. The couple wanted a house with enough storage space for Mr. Their ability to do the work themselves meant they didn’t need to spend time and money finding and hiring the right contractor. Burk picked up construction skills while working for a plumber when he was in high school and later developed those skills by flipping houses, and Ms. But while other Hudson Valley buyers were squaring off in bidding wars and offering tens of thousands of dollars over the asking price, the Burks focused on fixer-uppers they could renovate themselves. Email: retirement thrust the couple into a Hudson Valley house search just as a stream of New Yorkers fleeing the city created fierce competition. [Did you recently buy or rent a home? We want to hear from you. “The views were beautiful, it was quiet and there were low taxes.” Burk, who began rock-climbing near the local lakes 15 years ago. “We fell in love with the area,” said Mr. ![]() Burk still works in Manhattan as a freelance photo stylist for clients like Tory Burch and Coach, but plans to focus entirely on Lotus when she turns 50 in August. ![]() Burk, 49, got serious about finding a place in Kerhonkson to call home. Burk, now 52, retired from his job as the manager of a Manhattan printing plant, he and Ms. The endeavor gave the couple a foothold in Kerhonkson, just north of the Shawangunk Ridge. They still own those properties, which they plan to renovate and rent eventually, as well as a third house they intend to flip. In 2017, while the couple were living in Port Washington, N.Y., they bought a cottage and a cabin in the Ulster County hamlet and started a house-flipping business called Lotus Restoration & Design. But until last year, they had yet to find a home there. ![]() Henry and Jill Burk have been buying property in Kerhonkson, N.Y., for years.
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