More on the hot rural housing market (and attendant housing shortage)

I've written a lot lately about the rural housing shortage and rising property prices in rural America.  Now, Frank Morris reports for NPR out of Osceola, Missouri, population 947, where the housing market is booming.  Osceola is the county seat of St. Clair County, but/and it is more than an hour from both the Kansas City suburbs and Springfield to the south.    

The story features folks migrating from California, like Robert Velasquez and Craig Yoder, looking for a home in mid-America where they can get more for their money.  

MORRIS: Velasquez, along with his wife and her siblings, are shopping for property here. They're approaching retirement and say that California has become too expensive and, for them, too liberal. And Velasquez's brother-in-law Craig Yoder says that coming from California, they're wielding substantial buying power in rural Missouri.

CRAIG YODER: We have three good incomes and three properties that we can sell in California for a big - I own my house outright. So it's pure profit. And the prices have gone crazy.

MORRIS: And prospective buyers like Yoder are driving up rural home prices, according to Daryl Fairweather, an economist with the real estate brokerage Redfin.

DARYL FAIRWEATHER: People are moving towards places that are more affordable because of remote work that they wouldn't have considered before. I'm actually part of this trend. I moved from Seattle, which had been seeing price growth for quite some time, to a rural part of Wisconsin.

Morris explains, "The rise in rural property values can vary dramatically from region to region and town to town. 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." 

Sadly, the rise in housing prices in places like Osceola is hurting others at the lower end of the market. In Osceola, that includes folks like Misty Ketner, a cook at a restaurant/gas station who is couch-surfing because she can't afford a place to live.  

MORRIS: Ketner doesn't want to buy. She just wants to rent a place in a town where she's lived for 20 years. Michelle Johnson, who manages a gas station and restaurant here, says Ketner's struggle is a familiar one. Hurting businesses lose good workers.

MICHELLE JOHNSON: Finding them housing in this town is incredibly difficult. And then if they can't find housing here, they're going to move on and probably not continue to be an employee here.

Another story about urban-to-rural migration, driven largely by the pandemic, including the opportunity for remote work, is here.  Here's a comprehensive report from the Housing Assistance Council, which is a policy organization focused on rural housing, about the impact of the pandemic on rural America.