Migration to booming ‘Zoom towns’ in Pacific Northwest sends home prices into overdrive

You can add a new term to your lexicon: “Zoom towns.” These are scenic places experiencing a surge of house hunters. Booming demand comes from workers freed by the pandemic to work from home long term.

One such place where the pandemic has super-charged an already hot real estate market is Bend, Oregon.

“I think ‘Zoom town’ very accurately captures the experience that we’re having right now,” said Brian Ladd, a principal broker with Cascade Sotheby’s International Realty in Bend.

“For anyone that had interest in moving to a town like ours, that plan was greatly accelerated because of COVID,” Ladd said in an interview over Zoom, of course. “When they were able to work remotely, or they were forced to work remotely, all of a sudden it became an option.”

Ladd’s observations are shared by brokers in at least half a dozen other outdoorsy, vacation destinations around the Pacific…