According to Hawaii’s economy and tourism officials, there is no accurate data set on how many people come to the islands specifically to work remotely. But it doesn’t take a spreadsheet to see the lasting impact left by every remote worker visiting or moving to the islands during the pandemic.

Many remote workers come to the islands with good intentions. This is not always enough.

Just ask locals like Rechung Fujihira, co-founder and CEO of co-working space Box Jelly in his hometown of Honolulu. Remote work has brought a new mix of people from all over through its doors to meet. And to grab a surfboard from the Box Jelly collection and hit the waves. “Most of the people who move here are my friends, I meet them through work,” Fujihira said.

Telecommuting has also allowed some Hawaiians who work on the mainland to return home temporarily or permanently and be closer to their families, he said. Fujihira’s space began filling up with significantly more remote workers in the spring of 2021, including more day shifts than before, a boon for business.

But there can be a gap between intended and real impacts, especially when it comes to housing.

Many, if not all, come from the tech industry and can afford expensive housing on the island, Fujihira said.

“People with more purchasing power can come in and buy houses easily. That part makes me sad,” he said, adding that many locals have been forced to leave the islands due to housing shortages and rising prices. Las Vegas is a fairly common destination for locals who migrate to the mainland, often referred to as the “ninth island.”

Like the Bay Area, Hawaii has struggled with a severe, region-defining housing shortage for decades. But the pandemic changed work on the islands to a different mechanism, because people no longer had to come to the office.

“From March 2020 to early 2022, every real estate market across the state had a record number of cash buyers, no sight buyers,” said Rebecca Morton, a broker with Coldwell Banker Island Properties in Kailua-Kona, who oversaw the transactions. On the big island.

Morton, who lives in California, said he moved to the Big Island in the 1990s and has lived there more than half his life. He listed a home that previously sold for $800,000. It went back on the market during the pandemic for $950,000 and eventually sold for over $1 million.

As elsewhere, the market has cooled slightly in recent months due to rising mortgage interest rates. But the median sales price for a single-family home on the Big Island in July was still $456,000, up 7% from the same month last year. According to Coldwell Banker, the average price of a condo increased 11% from last July to $540,000.

Morton said the bulk of his clients come from the Bay Area tech industry. He said many executives have moved to Hawaii during the pandemic, particularly from the mainland.

However, not everyone who poured into the islands during the period of remote work could stay. This also had consequences for the housing market.

Earlier this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk told employees to return to personal work for 40 hours a week or risk being fired. Other corporate giants, such as Goldman Sachs, have rolled out similar policies during the current phase of the pandemic, making full-time remote work increasingly rare. Apple has begun requiring many employees to return to the office three days a week, while Google has been following the same route for US workers since earlier this year.

“Remote work still exists, but sometimes it’s hybrid, which excludes coming to Hawaii for a month,” said Nicole Lim, Honolulu-based director of Movers and Shakas.

But this does not mean that housing for local residents suddenly opens up. Morton said many buyers keep the properties as short-term vacation rentals, even though they don’t live in Hawaii full-time.

Rising housing prices in Hawaii benefit some local residents. Like many longtime San Franciscans who sold their homes for a tidy sum when one of the tech booms drove up prices, some Hawaii residents did the same.