Remote work hotspot – St. Augustine, FL. – Courtesy: Shutterstock – Image by Sean Pavone
ST. AUGUSTINE, FL. – When Lori Matthias and her husband relocated to St. Augustine, Florida, in 2023, they were sick of Atlanta traffic. The desire to be nearer to their adult children drove Mike Waldron and his wife to relocate from the Boston region to what they call “the nation’s oldest city” in 2020.
They were one of the thousands of distant, white-collar workers who moved to the St. Augustine area in recent years, turning the popular seaside town into one of the country’s leading centers for remote work.
Matthias fell in love with the small-town vibe of St. Augustine and traded in her hour-long Atlanta drive for the chance to run into friends and acquaintances while out and about.
Matthias, who works in sales and marketing for a power tool firm, stated, “I’m drawn to the slower pace here.” “I walk around thirty steps from my kitchen to my office on daily commute. Simply put, it’s different. It’s just laid back and amiable.
The St. Augustine region was claimed by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century following the arrival of explorer Juan Ponce de Leon, centuries before it became an isolated center of work. Its Spanish-style terracotta roofs and arched doors, trollies that transport tourists, a medieval fort, an alligator farm, lighthouses, and a shipwreck museum are its most well-known features nowadays.
An increase in population brought on by the pandemic
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the number of employees in St. Johns County, which is home to St. Augustine, who worked from home nearly tripled from 8.6% in 2018 to nearly 24% in 2023, placing the northeast Florida county in the top tier of U.S. counties with the highest percentage of remote workers.
The only counties with a higher percentage of employees working from home were those with a high concentration of government, tech, and financial workers in metro Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, and Dallas, as well as two counties in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina. However, these counties had far larger populations than St. Johns County, which now has 335,000 persons after growing by more than a fifth in the last ten years.
The county’s chamber of commerce’s vice president of economic development, Scott Maynard, credits the initial surge of newcomers to Florida’s removal of COVID-19 restrictions on schools and companies in the fall of 2020, when the rest of the nation was still under lockdown.
“Many people from the Northeast, Midwest, and California were moving here to give their kids a more in-person education,” Maynard stated. “That attracted a huge number of people who wanted their kids to return to a traditional classroom setting and had the ability to work remotely.”
According to the state Department of Education’s yearly report card, St. Johns County’s public schools are among the finest in the state.
Gaining popularity has a cost.
Since many of the new, remote workers moving into the area are wealthier than locals and can outbid them on properties, the flood of new inhabitants has caused growing pains, especially when it comes to affordable housing, officials said.
Rising housing costs have caused many important personnel, including teachers, firefighters, and police officers, to commute from outside St. Johns County. According to Census Bureau data, the median home price increased from $405,000 in 2019 to nearly $535,000 in 2023, further eclipsing the county’s critical workers from affording a home.
According to a local chamber of commerce estimate, essential workers would need to make at least $180,000 per year to buy the median price of a home in St. Johns County, but the average pay for a teacher is about $48,000, and the average salary for a law enforcement officer is around $58,000.
According to Aliyah Meyer, an economic researcher at the chamber of commerce, “a lot of the people, especially coming in from up North, were able to sell their homes for such a high value and come here and just pay cash because this seemed affordable to them.” As a result, the market was somewhat inflated, and locals were somewhat constrained.
At the height of the pandemic, Waldron, a sales professional in the health care sector, was able to sell his house in Boston and buy a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in a gated community near a golf course south of St. Augustine, where “things really worked out to be less expensive down here.”
The popularity of online meeting platforms from the beginning of the pandemic and the flexibility provided by fast wireless internet also had a role in remote work.
“I couldn’t have moved down here if I was still locked in an office,” Waldron remarked.
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Born and raised in South Florida, Krystal is a recent graduate from the University of Miami with professional writing experience at the collegiate and national news outlet levels. She’s a foodie who loves all things travel, the beach, & visiting new places throughout Florida.