REAL ESTATE NEWS

Deep in the pandemic, there was one pleasant new fact of life: shorter commutes. However, that may be coming to an end, according to Yardi Kube data.

The pandemic “dramatically disrupted” what was "once a predictable routine.” As millions more people worked from home, fewer commuted between work and home. In 2019, the average one-way commute time was 27.6 minutes. It fell to 25.6 minutes by 2021, when the work-from-home force grew to 27.6 million. That was close to a 2011 reality with commuting times of 25.5 minutes.

Now, the average commute has grown to 27.2 minutes since 2021 — still 0.4 minutes lower than in 2019 but almost returning to pre-pandemic patterns. Interestingly, the association between the number of remote workers and travel time to work doesn't tell the full story. For example, 2019 had 8.9 million remote workers and a 27.6-minute one-way commute time; 2021, 27.6 million remote workers, 25.6-minute commute; 2022, 24.4 million remote workers, 26.4-minute commute; 2023, 22.4 million remote workers, 26.8-minute commute; and 2024, 21.9 million remote workers, 27.2-minute commute.

That’s a commute growth of 1.6 minutes in three years. This is “illustrating how swiftly commuting behavior is reverting as more employees return to physical workplaces and remote options narrow,” as the report says. Yardi Kube also noted that between 2023 and 2024, the U.S. workforce grew by 1.8%, from 162.4 million to 165.4 million. The percentage of employees working remotely dropped from 13.8% to 13.3%. In 2019, the remote workforce was 5.7%. It’s all a “recalibration of workplace dynamics.”

The ten U.S. cities with the longest commutes in 2024 were New York, NY (40.6 minutes); Chicago, IL (33.5 minutes); Philadelphia, PA (33.2 minutes); San Francisco, CA (33.2 minutes); Los Angeles, CA (31.7 minutes); Boston, MA (31.7 minutes); Long Beach, CA (31.2 minutes); Oakland, CA (31.2 minutes); Washington, D.C. (31.0 minutes); and Baltimore, MD (30.2 minutes).

The top ten cities with the quickest commutes were Tulsa, OK (19.7 minutes); Omaha, NE (20.0 minutes); Memphis, TN (21.4 minutes); Tucson, AZ (21.7 minutes); Kansas City, MO (21.8 minutes); Oklahoma City, OK (21.9 minutes); Columbus, OH (22.2 minutes); Milwaukee, WI (22.5 minutes); Minneapolis, MN (22.8 minutes); and Detroit, MI (22.9 minutes).

All this data leaves open the question, though, of how important any of this is. In 2023, Moody’s wrote, “In an era where employees still have a bit of an upper hand in the remote work debate, any additional cost of coming to the office could be quite important to utilization rates, and ultimately to office sector performance.”

These days, it isn’t clear whether employees have much leverage, especially with the newest waves of artificial intelligence undermining job security. Additionally, the maximum average time savings wasn’t that large. The average difference between 2021, the commuting low point and 2024 has been only 1.6 minutes.

Yardi’s CommercialCafe reported on 2021 commute times. The differences from 2021 to 2024 commute times in the top worst cities are relatively insignificant: New York, NY (0.8 minutes); Chicago, IL (1.3 minutes); Philadelphia, PA (2.1 minutes); San Francisco, CA (four minutes); Los Angeles, CA (1.9 minutes); Boston, MA (3.1 minutes); Long Beach, CA (2.9 minutes); Oakland, CA (2.9 minutes); Washington, D.C. (2.7 minutes); and Baltimore, MD (2.9 minutes).

San Francisco had the largest increase — but even that one was so small on average that it may not matter to most travelers, even if some specific cases are more extreme and could be motivating to those workers.

Source: GlobeSt/ALM