But if you're WFH, you don't need to live in central Tokyo, you can live anywhere. You'd probably save money by gaining an extra bedroom and moving out of central Tokyo, no?
- (Affordable) Hospitals/Police/Firewatch in reasonable distance
- Are not to far away from the companies office as you likely still have to go to the office from time to time.
EDIT: Most people don't live in Tokyo or cities with similar expensive housings. The cost of moving away from cities is often much bigger then "just" longer transit times from home to work.
If WFH was guarantee, I'd have enough money to take a helicopter down to NYC twice a month instead of paying taxes/rent/mortgage/higher cost of food/MTA/LIRR/etc.
While living in a house with too many bedrooms. And if you want to talk about environmental impact, the air is cleaner the water is blue again and maybe we start paying baristas 100k a year for the inconvenience of having to live in the city instead of software engineers that can fckoff and do this from the moon.
The obvious is slapping everyone in the face. And if you are in commercial real estate, best wishes in 2021.
>Are not to far away from the companies office as you likely still have to go to the office from time to time.
The length of a "tolerable commute" increases disproportionately as the frequency of said commute declines. If I have to commute every day, anything over 30 minutes is pretty tiring. If I have to commute twice a week, driving 2+ hours is fine. If I have to commute once a month, I'd be willing to live on the other side of the country and fly in.
It already is. I live in a semi-rural area that's lovely, but the commute is a hassle (there's a ferry to downtown, if you can walk/bus from there it's ok, but long, if you have to drive from there, you have to fight for limited car spaces on the ferry, and traffic is awful around downtown, etc; and friday afternoons its hard to get a car on the ferry because of weekend trips). This summer a lot of people have moved from the other side of the ferry, because they can WFH (for now) and would prefer more space right now. Real estate prices are up and inventory is down. Of course, if they need to be in the office 4 or 5 days a week, they will likely move back.
In addition, you're being forced to adjust your personal lifestyle because of the office space your employer is choosing not to provide. Perhaps it would be cheaper to live in a farm house in the middle of nowhere, but what if you want to live in central Tokyo? Perhaps it's the American in me, but doesn't everyone deserve the right to pursue happiness, even if it's in the form of the city in which you live?
If other people flee the cities in favor of cheaper housing elsewhere, then real estate prices should decrease in places like Tokyo making it easer to live there for the people who want to.
Sure, you might want to live in central Tokyo, Manhattan, SF, etc. And it would be nice to be able to do so. But also Aspen, Nantucket, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Myrtle Beach, etc. Absent a business purpose, why should the former be subsidized over the latter.
But then this is the trade: he goes from a cheap, tiny place in Tokyo, spends most of his time at the office or out and about, gets to enjoy a world-class city
to: living somewhere that isn't Tokyo, where he can afford a space large enough to have an office, and is home all the time, and doesn't get to enjoy a world-class city.
Not a win, I'm guessing. And this is coming from someone in his third year of remote work who lives a mile out of a village of about 3,000 people. It's not everyone's cup of tea.
