Bay Area tech workers say they would move if they worked from home full time

• More than 40% of Bay Area tech workers say they would move to a less expensive city if asked to work permanently from home, according to a new study from the Hired job search database.
• The survey found that 42% of Bay Area respondents said they would leave, compared to 40% in New York and 33% in the UK.
• San Francisco is the most expensive city in the United States for home buyers, and only 18% of households can buy a mid-priced home in the region.
• Some tech companies have said their remote workforce will grow in the coming years. Twitter has offered the option for employees to work from home forever; Facebook has said that employees can move out of the Bay Area, but can take a cut in wages.
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In a permanent work-from-home situation, more than 40% of tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area would leave the region, according to a new survey.

Job Search Database Hired surveyed 2,300 technology workers based in New York, the United Kingdom, and the Bay Area. When asked what they would do if their employer told them to work from home full time, 42% of respondents in the Bay Area said they would move to a less expensive city, and 47% of respondents in the Bay Area said that The main motivator to move to a new city would be a lower cost of living.

The survey found that 40% of tech workers in New York also said they would move to a cheaper location, while 33% of UK employees said they would do the same.

A recent survey by Blind, an anonymous social network focused on work, produced similar findings. Blind surveyed 4,400 workers, of whom about 2,800 live in the Bay Area, on how to work remotely and how it might affect where they choose to live. Two-thirds of respondents said they would leave the region if they were asked to work from home permanently.

The Bay Area region is known for its high cost of living. In fact, San Francisco is the most expensive city in the US for home buyers: Only 18% of households can buy a mid-priced home in the region, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The median income for San Francisco is $ 112,376, but anyone interested in buying a home in the city would need to earn a salary of at least $ 172,153 to pay off the mortgage.

The shift to remote work during the coronavirus crisis has already affected homes within the city. In May, a Redfin report showed that 72% of its San Francisco-based users were looking for homes outside the city.

And data from home rental site Zumper showed rents plummeted in the Bay Area in May, with declines of up to 15.9% in Mountain View, where Google is located, and similar declines in Menlo’s Facebook home. Park and the house of San from YouTube. Bruno In San Francisco proper, there has been a 9.2% drop in rental prices since this time last year, and the city experienced the lowest rent since early 2017, Zumper found.

While all of the major Bay Area tech companies asked their employees to start working from home in March, some are considering sending their employees back in a few months. Apple has had some employees reporting to its Cupertino campus since May, while Facebook appears to have opened its offices as of July. A recent surge in cases in California led Google, which had planned to start sending employees back on July 6, to change their plans. Google now says that employees will return in September at the earliest.

But some tech companies are reconsidering whether employees should return to the office. Twitter announced in May that employees can work from home forever if they want to, and in the case of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg recently told employees that eventually as many as half of the company’s employees would likely work from home.

However, a move outside the Bay Area can have consequences for employees when it comes to their wages. Zuckerberg recently told employees that starting in January, employee wages will be adjusted based on where they live, which the company will verify by monitoring where employees are when they log into the company’s internal systems, according to The New York Times.