As major technology employers in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere continue to encourage employees to continue working remotely, Northern Nevada is beginning to benefit.
Organizations ranging from economic development agencies to homebuilders are seeking to capitalize on the trend.
Workers who now can set up shop anywhere are deciding that the lower housing costs, quality of life, easy access to the San Francisco Bay Area and lack of a state income tax make a home office in Reno or Sparks an ideal place to earn a big city-sized paycheck, says Stan Thomas, executive vice president of business development for the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.
EDAWN has been marketing heavily into the Bay Area in recent months, mostly to attract companies that might relocate to the Reno-Sparks area.
But that marketing, Thomas says, also has built interest in Northern Nevada among individual workers who now find themselves working remotely.
Toll Builders, a builder of luxury homes with projects under way in Reno and Sparks, has seen an acceleration in the number of remote workers who are buying homes in Northern Nevada as employers relax work-from-home policies.
“We’ve found the majority of our buyers who are remote workers are coming from Northern California (the Bay Area and Sacramento) and represent a variety of life stages, from young families to single professionals to empty nesters still working,” says Caryn Pollock, marketing account manager at Toll Brothers.
A floorplan created for multi-generational families — say, a family caring for an aging parent at home — now is finding popularity with remote workers, Pollock says.
Workers find the homes’ suites, many with full baths or kitchenettes designed for an aging relative or a recent college graduate who returned home, now can be used instead for home offices or studios. Some families use the suites as mini schools for their remote-learning children.
Along with the immediate impact of remote workers’ new paychecks that will be spent at local businesses, the influx promises to pay benefits for the Northern Nevada economy over the longer term, says Thomas.
The growing availability of a pool of highly skilled workers will help recruit traditional employers to the region. Then, too, the skills and drive of many remote workers will encourage them to create new entrepreneurial companies after they’ve established personal roots in northern Nevada.
