I’ve been following news of this sort closely during COVID as a personal curiosity. Most of the affected towns are either (1) within 1-2 hour drive of a major metro center (e.g. northwestern CT) (2) already a major vacation destination prior to COVID (Jackson Hole, WY and friends) (3) a top-3 metro area in the state. If you check more than one box, the situation is more dramatic.
Many of these places were already changing prior to COVID, but, as in other domains, COVID has accelerated an already latent process.
Basically, Missoula’s example does not contradict their claim.
But yes, remote workers are more likely to move to a place like Missoula than a place like Philipsburg, MT.
are you at all familiar with missoula? i am. my wife is from there. i visit regularly.
it is packed into one end of a mountain valley, surrounded by mountains on three sides. the land there was already extremely limited.
when you stop competing for the same strip of land, 10 miles from the pacific ocean, it turns out there's a sort of stupendous amount of land.
while, yes, there will technically be some competition, in the areas under discussion i don't think it will meaningfully effect housing prices.
(i could divide the amount of land in rural america by the number of possible work-from-home employees and we could figure out what it'll do to the average population density. but, hell, i've lived in these areas, i don't need to.)