Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXVI): City folks still seeking country retreats, this time to buy

Just two stories on this topic in the past several days are one out of Wyoming (which is nearly rural in its entirety) and one out of New York.

WyoFile, Wyoming's non-profit news website, reported last week here, under the headline "COVID refugees bring mini-boom to some Wyo real estate markets." Angus M. Thuermer Jr. reports:

As Wyoming’s economy gets back in gear following a COVID-19 stay-at-home lull, one corner of the business world is seeing at least a mini boom — the rural refuge real estate market. 

From Torrington to Cody, Jackson to Sheridan, rental and real estate agents report brisk business driven in part, they believe, by big-city customers seeking new homes they think will be farther from trouble. 

Some of the surge could be called a COVID comeback. But enduring Wyoming qualities, from the state’s small population, to low taxes, rural landscape, mountains and rivers figure in a bounce-back in some communities that aren’t tied to energy production. 

“During the official quarantine, certainly we did get a lot of phone calls — some of them attributed to people saying ‘I want to get out of the big city and [move] to wide-open Wyoming,’” said Ty Pedersen, president of the Northwest Wyoming Board of Realtors and a Cody real estate agent. “There’s a prediction we will start to see more of that. The feeling is there’s going to be a little resurgence here for Wyoming.” 

While Cody has the draw of world-famous Yellowstone National Park, the Sheridan region’s own Bighorn Mountain beauty suggests a broader attraction. “I think in general people are looking for a more rural setting,” said Karen Chase, marketing manager for the Powder Horn Golf Club and community. “I would say they’re looking for a less populated area.”

At the other end of the rural-urban continuum (at least in terms of the state at issue) is this New York Times story about how the Catskills are booming because of refugees from NYC.  Julie Lasky writes of a run on houses in that region.    An excerpt follows:

In Sullivan, Ulster, Greene and Delaware Counties, urbanites with the wherewithal to venture beyond the city are snapping up primary and weekend houses, many in what real estate sales agents say is a financial sweet spot from $200,00 to $450,000. They are forging ahead despite the inconveniences and uncertainties of buying in a pandemic (masked, self-directed house tours; cautious lenders; virtual closings).

An early-quarantine story about a rural area in France that had escaped the pandemic is here.