Top Metros for Buyers Working From Home

A city with the perfect balance of affordability, livability, and connectivity makes it an ideal place for remote workers to live, according to PCMag. Understanding the markets fit for working from home can be beneficial to builders far after the pandemic is over because remote work has been trending upward since 2010. To identify the best cities for working from home, PCMag reviewed internet connections, housing affordability, internet affordability, and remote work friendly lifestyles. The top ranking remote work town is Chattanooga, thanks to its citywide fiber network. Nationwide, 5.7% of Americans worked from home in 2019. That share was 6.8% in Chattanooga’s county.

"In 2020, it was evident that Chattanooga has been able to attract talent from major cities and companies. I've run into folks who work for Spotify, Stripe, Netflix, et al. The quality of life was a major reason many of these folks moved from places like NYC, SF, LA, and more," venture capitalist Santosh Sankar of Dynamo Management Co. in Chattanooga told us.

Southern Vermont locales also place highly in our ranking, with Pawlet at number three and Springfield at number 9, thanks to the efforts of the Vermont Telephone Company to revitalize 14 villages by wiring them with fiber. Nearby Mount Holly would also have placed on the list, but it was too close to the other two towns. Vtel's president, Michael Guite, said the company started by wiring the local library with fiber in 2008 and took its connections to 18,000 homes by 2016.

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