This Florida Beach town is one of the hottest remote work spots in the United States

st. Augustine – Lori Mattias and her husband were tired of Atlanta traffic when they moved to St. Augustine, Florida in 2023. For Mike Waldron and his wife, they moved from the Boston area in 2020 to what they call “the oldest city in the country.”

They are among the thousands of white-collar remote workers who have moved to the St. Augustine area in recent years, transforming the tourist beach town into one of the top remote hubs in the United States.

Matthias fell in love with the feelings of a small town in St. Augustine, swapping an hour-long commute in Atlanta, running errands with friends and acquaintances.

“The whole pace here is slow and I’m drawn to it,” said Matthias, who sells and markets power tool companies. “My commute is like 30 levels from the kitchen to the office. That’s completely different. It’s just relaxing and friendly.”

Before becoming a centuries-old remote work hub, the St. Augustine region was claimed by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century after the arrival of explorer Juan Pontè de Leon. In modern times, it is best known for its Spanish architecture, including terracotta roofs and arched doorways, trolleys that carry tourists, historic forts, alligator farms, lighthouses and shipwreck museums.

The population boom driven by the pandemic

In St. John’s County, home to St. Augustine, the proportion of workers who work from home has almost tripled from 8.6% in 2018 to almost 24% in 2023, moving northeastern Florida counties to top rank in US counties, working remotely.

Only two counties in Washington Metro, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Dallas with a high-tech, financial and government work presence, and two counties in the North Carolina Research Triangle, had a larger share of the workforce working from home. But these were counties that were far more populous than the 335,000 residents of St. John’s County.

Scott Maynard, vice president of economic development for the county chamber of commerce, believes the first influx of new residents was trapped in the fall of 2020 when Florida businesses and schools lifted Covid-19 restrictions.

“A lot of people were migrating from here from the Northeast, the Midwest and California, allowing our children to return to in-person education,” Maynard said. “It brought a huge number of people who had the ability to work remotely and wanted children back to face-to-face school situations.”

According to the state Department of Education’s annual report, St. John’s County public schools are Florida’s best schools.

Popularity is rapidly increasing

The influx of new residents has resulted in growing pains, especially when it comes to affordable housing, as many of the new remote workers moving into the area are wealthier than locals and can outperform them at home, officials said.

Many key workers, including police officers, firefighters and teachers, have been forced to commute from outside St. John’s County due to rising housing costs. Median home prices have increased from $405,000 in 2019 to nearly $535,000 in 2023, allowing homes to be purchased out of reach of county essential workers, according to figures from the Census Bureau.

A local chamber of commerce analysis shows that while key workers need to earn at least $180,000 a year to earn the median price of a St. John’s County home, teachers earn around $48,000 on average, with law enforcement officers making an average of around $58,000.

“What happened was that a lot of people who come from the north, especially from the north, were able to sell their homes for such a high value and come here and pay cash because this looks affordable to them,” said Aliya Meyer, an economics researcher at the Chamber of Commerce. “So it kind of inflated the market and put a bit of a constraint on the locals.”

Waldron, a sales executive in the healthcare industry, was able to sell his Boston home at the height of the pandemic and buy a three-bedroom, two-bath home in the gated community on a golf course outside St. Augustine.

The flexibility provided by the high-speed wireless internet and the popularity of online meeting platforms since the start of the pandemic have also helped.

“If I had been still locked up in the office, I wouldn’t have been able to move here,” Waldron said.

By Associated Press, Mike Schneider