This is a preliminary, descriptive exhibit. Before we can measure what remote work did to housing costs, we can watch it arrive in how properties are advertised. Each listing’s text is scanned for a remote-work cue: the explicit phrase “work from home”, an office or study room, a garden office, or a mention of broadband and connectivity. The chart tracks the share of listings carrying each cue, by year and tenure.
The explicit phrase was close to absent before 2020 and rose sharply afterwards. It reverts in the sale market as the immediate shock passed, but keeps climbing in the rental market, consistent with renters, who move more often and are more exposed to housing costs, continuing to prioritise it. This shows the shock arriving in behaviour. It is not yet its effect on housing costs: measuring who bears that cost, and where inelastic supply concentrates it, is the next stage of the work and awaits external teleworkability and supply-elasticity data.