The real estate market is sizzling, with home sales in South Lake Tahoe almost doubling over the summer compared with a year earlier, and rising prices making it more difficult for locals to purchase property.
But in pricey California, the trend may hold up longer as companies grow more lenient and workers opt for cheaper lifestyles. Over the past few months, at least six Google employees have bought homes in Truckee, a small town with a population of about 16,700, according to research from Atlasa, a data-driven real estate brokerage.
In South Lake Tahoe,"July was bananas" for the real estate market, said Sharon Kerrigan, executive vice-president of the local realtors association. Including condos and townhomes, a total of 372 properties sold from June to August, up from 197 in the same period last year. She has seen a tangential effect first-hand: Her sixth-grader had seven new students in his class this year.
"We're hoping for a really bad winter so all these people who are buying houses will realise how tough it is living here year round, and then they'll go move."And it's been good for her store, which sells Tahoe souvenirs, as well as jewelry and local art. While it has only been open half of its normal hours because of Covid-19, it's made more than two-thirds of its typical earnings. This past Labor Day was even better than the year before, she said.
"We're all very on edge about fire right now," Mr Orr said."That's always been a big concern for Tahoe; we've had some pretty catastrophic fires." Voters recently passed a measure that would ban short-term rentals in much of the city starting next year, intending to address the housing shortage and bring down rental costs for the local workforce."To buy a US$600,000 or US$800,000 house is probably not in the cards for a lot of locals," Mr Collins said.