By Candace Taylor
When Covid-19 struck New York City in March, Jessica and Matthew
Perkal were among the many Manhattan residents who decided to wait
out the pandemic in a more rural setting. Ms. Perkal, who is
pregnant with the couple's second child, and her husband left their
West Village apartment for Kiawah, a South Carolina barrier island
where they had frequently vacationed with Ms. Perkal's family. "We
thought, 'let's go somewhere we enjoy,'" said Ms. Perkal, who is
originally from Charlotte, N.C.
At first they rented on Kiawah, enjoying the "big wide beach"
and biking with their daughter, Charlie. But as the pandemic
dragged on, they started looking at houses for sale. They found a
house they loved and bought it for $2 million, records show, moving
in about a month ago. Once the pandemic is over they plan to return
to New York City, Ms. Perkal said, using their new beach house for
summer vacations and weekends.
Buying a Kiawah home was something they had always wanted to do.
"The pandemic was an impetus for things we were already thinking
about," Ms. Perkal said.
Second-home sales in resort and rural communities have seen a
surprising surge in recent months. On Kiawah, for example, local
real-estate firm Kiawah Island Real Estate said it put 72
properties under contract in June, more than quadruple the number
in June of last year. Unlike the West Coast, where a home sales
boom is being fed by buyers relocating permanently, or buying homes
to use for long-term staycations, many residents of East Coast
metro areas are snatching up vacation homes as family escapes from
whatever the pandemic brings next.
Despite predictions that the pandemic would drive wealthy
eastern urbanites to abandon cities, many of these buyers aren't
giving up their primary homes, but rather acting on a longtime
desire for a town-and-country lifestyle.
Buyers are "reassessing how they're going on vacation and
spending their time," said Paul Grover, a real-estate agent on Cape
Cod, a popular vacation destination on the Massachusetts coast. He
said homes there are getting multiple offers and selling within a
day or hours of hitting the market, a phenomenon previously unheard
of in the area's generally unhurried market. "This is the strongest
I've ever seen it," he said. "Having a house on the water or close
to the water gives them the ability to be away without getting on a
plane."
He said most of these buyers -- many from the Boston area -- are
keeping their primary homes. "For people in the city, the pandemic
has opened their eyes to the fact that as great as it is to be in
the city, it's good to have something else in situations that maybe
nobody had thought of before."
In the rural Hudson Valley north of New York City, home prices
have increased 10% to 20% in the last three months, with homes
selling after less than 24 hours on the market, according to Colin
Brice, an architect and real-estate developer in the area. "When
the pandemic hit, people were like 'I need to get out of here, at
least for the summer,'" said Mr. Brice. For urbanites, he said,
"the pandemic was a wake-up call that 'I need a place to go just in
case.'"
This is a sudden reversal of fortune for some markets that had
struggled before the virus. The real-estate market in Connecticut,
for example, was "sort of slumbering," before the pandemic, said
Annette Coplit, a real-estate agent in the coastal town of
Westport, Conn., a popular weekend-home destination for New
Yorkers. But since the pandemic started, she said she's seeing
bidding wars and people paying over the asking price.
"I've been in the business for 30 years, and I've never seen a
market like this," she said. "Even at the peak in 2005 we didn't
have this kind of demand."
In Connecticut's rural Litchfield County, 13 listings priced
from $1 million to $5 million sold in May, more than double the
number in the same period of last year, according to Berkshire
Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties. In Dutchess County in
the Hudson Valley, the average home price jumped to $393,571 in
June, 14% higher than the same month of last year, according to the
brokerage Houlihan Lawrence. In the Hamptons, the number of new
contracts signed in June leapt 88.5% from the same month last year,
while Long Island's North Fork increased 29.2%, according to a
Douglas Elliman market report prepared by Miller Samuel. By
contrast, the number of new contracts signed on the rest of Long
Island fell 8.4% during the same period.
Floridians Gretchen and Chad Rich take their five children on
ski vacations in the Rocky Mountains every year. And while the
Pensacola family had long dreamed of buying a ski house of their
own, they never thought they would do it anytime soon, Mr. Rich
said, until Covid-19 came along. In June, they paid $760,000 for a
cabin on 2.5 wooded acres in Jackson Hole.
"It was always one of those things, like 'wouldn't it be nice?"
said Mr. Rich, 50, an executive at OneDigital Health and Benefits.
But when the pandemic struck, "we wanted a safe, less-populated
place for vacation, a place to run to that makes our family
happy."
New Yorkers Roxanna Namavar and Shamim Ahmed had been casually
looking for a Hamptons home when Covid-19 struck. "We were going to
buy something anyway," said Dr. Namavar, a physician and founder of
Pretty Healthy NYC. "It just sped up the timeline."
They found a house with a pool in East Hampton, which they liked
for its high ceilings and because it was newly renovated, meaning
they could move in right away. They made an offer for just under
the asking price, beating out several other bidders. Since closing
on the house in late May for $1.65 million, they have been living
there full-time with their young son. Dr. Namavar said they expect
to return to New York City once she can resume seeing patients in
her Manhattan office.
With timelines uncertain for returning to school and offices,
many vacation-home buyers are seeking out properties that can
double as full-time homes if necessary. Atlanta residents Tyler
Scriven and his wife Faith McCoy Scriven were already in the
process of looking for a weekend home when the pandemic hit. They
had decided on the wellness community of Serenbe about 45 minutes
outside Atlanta, Mr. Scriven said, and had their eye on an
under-construction house there. But with the onset of coronavirus
they changed course, choosing a larger, four-bedroom house that
could potentially become their primary home, and that was already
completed so they could start using it right away. They paid
$770,000 for the home in early May, and have been spending weekends
there with their 5-year-old son Patterson.
"It's very nice to be able to have somewhere to go at this
moment in time," said Mr. Scriven, co-founder of the Atlanta-based
warehousing startup Saltbox. "We're probably not going to get on a
plane for vacation anytime in the near future. So having this sort
of outlet is really a game-changer for us."
Low interest rates are another factor for many vacation-home
buyers, including Luke and Johanna Siegel, Manhattan residents who
recently went into contract on a country home in Dutchess County,
north of the city. "We're in the race to get our mortgage while the
rate is still where it is," said Mr. Siegel.
The Siegels faced a lot of competition for their home. They saw
it the day after it appeared on Zillow; the next day there were
nine other showings. "It was a madhouse," he said. After beating
out several other bidders, they are in contract for $517,000; the
house had been listed for $485,000.
Mr. Siegel's business, the interior space divider company
Raydoor, is based in New York City, and the couple's primary home
is a live-work space in Hudson Yards. They plan to spend weekends
at their new house, which sits on 30 acres with a barn. It is
something they have thought about for years, but the pandemic made
it feel more urgent, he said.
"If you're on some kind of fence," Mr. Siegel said, "Covid
shoves you off of it."
Write to Candace Taylor at Candace.Taylor@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2020 12:25 ET (16:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.