Richard Florida’s article in the Wall Street Journal documents the early results of worker’s shift from offices to Zoom; falling rents and increasing vacancies in expensive large metros and the opposite trend in smaller less expensive metros, using data provided by Apartment List.
The Apartment List data shows a very broad decline in US rents compared to previous years, starting in with the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. However, the national declines are primarily due to rent drops in expensive coastal cities. More affordable cities, however, have seen significant rent increases: