A 16th-century Spanish explorer claimed this Florida beach town. Now it’s a remote work hotspot

Article content

street. Augustine, Florida (AP) – Lori Matthias and her husband were tired of the Atlanta movement when they moved to St. Augustine, Florida, in 2023. For Mike, Daron and his wife, they moved from Boston in 2020 to a place where bills earn as “the oldest city in the country”, which was motivated by the desire to be close to their adult children.

Article content

Article content

They were among the thousands of white collar, and workers from the distance who migrated to the St. Augustine region in recent years, where they turned the tourist beach city into one of the best remote work centers in the United States.

Article content

Matthias fell in love with the feeling of the small town of Saint Augustine, and the trading of an hour -long movement in Atlanta to clash with friends and acquaintances while managing the missions.

“The full pace here is slower and I am attracted to that,” said Matthias, who is sales and marketing for the energy tools company. “You moved like 30 steps from my kitchen to my office. It is completely different. It is just relaxing and friendly.”

A century before becoming a remote work center, the St. Augustine region was called by the Spanish crown in the early sixteenth century after the arrival of the explorer Juan Pons de Lyon. In modern ages, its Spanish architectural tendencies of Terra Kouta surfaces, arched entrances, tourism photography, historical castle, crocodile farm, lighthouse, and shipwreck museum.

A population boom led by the epidemic

In St. Jones, St. Augustine's home, the percentage of workers who took their jobs from home has multiplied approximately three times from 8.6 % in 2018 to nearly 24 % in 2023, where they transferred Northeast Florida Province to the first in American provinces with the largest share of people working from remotely, according to the numbers of the American Statistical Office.

Article content

Article content

It was only the provinces of extreme presence of technology, financing and government workers in the Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Dallas, as well as two provinces in the Triangle of North Carolina research, a greater share of the workforce operating from the home. But these were more populated provinces than 335,000 population in St. Jones, which grew more than five during this decade.

Scott Minard, Vice President of Economic Development of the Chamber of Commerce in the province, attributes the initial flow of new residents to raising the restrictions of Covid-19 in companies and schools in the fall of 2020 while most of the country remained closed.

Mainard said: “Many people were moving here from the northeast and Middle West and California so that their children could return to education face to face,” Mainard said. “This has brought a huge number of people who have the ability to work far and wanted to return their children in a face -to -face school.”

Public schools in St. Jones County are among the best in Florida, according to the annual report card from the state Ministry of Education.

Article content

Popular rise at a price

Officials said that the flow of the new population brought increasing pain, especially when it comes to affiliate housing because many new and transported workers to the area are richer than the local population and are able to overcome them in homes.

Many of the main workers such as police officers, firefighters and teachers were forced to move from outside St. Jones due to the high housing costs. The average house price grew from $ 405,000 in 2019 to approximately $ 535,000 in 2023, according to the numbers of the statistical office, making buying a house out of the reach of the province's main workers.

Basic workers will need to earn at least $ 180,000 annually to provide the average home price in St. Jones, but the teacher has an average salary of about $ 48,000 and a law enforcement official earns about 58,000 dollars on average, according to the analysis of the local Chamber of Commerce.

“What happened is that many people, especially those coming from the north, were able to sell their homes for this high value and come here and pay the money only because this seemed accessible to everyone.” “Therefore, he amplified the market and put some restriction on the local population.”

Article content

The Waldron, Executive Director of Sales in the Health Care Industry, managed to sell his home in Boston at the height of the epidemic and buy a three -bedroom home and two bathrooms in a golf stadium outside St. Augustine, where “things really worked to be less expensive here.”

The flexibility provided by the fast wireless internet and the popularity of the online meeting platforms has also helped the epidemic.

And Al -Daroun said: “If I am still closed in an office, I will not be able to move here.”

___

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform: mikeysid.bsky.social

Article content