The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.Paul Sau-Ki Cheng says he was exonerated of his financial crimes in the 1980s. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris.Ĭopyright © 2021 NPR. MORRIS: Still, Fairweather expects rural home prices to keep climbing as people find themselves priced out of cities and suburbs and continue to look for cheaper places to live. People are more eager to get back to cities and enjoy big-city amenities. MORRIS: Redfin's Daryl Fairweather says rural rents will likely keep rising next year but that the unprecedented surge in interest in remote rural real estate may be easing.įAIRWEATHER: Now things have equalized, and I think that's because the pandemic is subsiding. And then if they can't find housing here, they're going to move on and probably not continue to be an employee here. MICHELLE JOHNSON: Finding them housing in this town is incredibly difficult. Michelle Johnson, who manages a gas station and restaurant here, says Ketner's struggle is a familiar one. She just wants to rent a place in a town where she's lived for 20 years. And I'm staying with friends because there is no housing. My two boys are living with the ex-husband. MISTY KETNER: My daughter lives with my sister at the moment because I don't have a home. And she says the housing crisis has split up her family. MORRIS: That city-style price jump can fall hard on people like Misty Ketner, a mother of three who works in a kitchen in a combination restaurant, gas station and craft store in Osceola. But Zillow economist Alexandra Lee says, on average, rural home prices are up around 16%, and that in many places, it's the first big price spike in anyone's memory.ĪLEXANDRA LEE: I think that might especially feel momentous in a rural area where home values are lower, where incomes are generally lower, suddenly seeing a runup in prices on par with metropolitan areas. The rise in rural property values can vary dramatically from region to region and town to town. Fairweather says remote work is driving lots of the rural relocations, with climate change, politics and lifestyle issues also propelling moves. 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. 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.
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