I bought a home in rural America during the pandemic – now I’m returning to the city and counting the cost after a bad experience

Stephanie Campisi, her husband Wesley and their young son headed to remote Tennessee during the Covid-19 pandemic.

They wanted to be closer to the older members of Wesley's family who lived in the state, so the family left the Coachella Valley, California, in early 2021.

The couple bought a three-bedroom, three-story home in eastern Tennessee, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, for about $250,000.

But just two and a half years later, they sold out and moved back to the Golden State, where they've been renting since September.

Stephanie, 38, and Wesley, 45, are among the growing group of Americans who bought rural homes during the pandemic and are now returning to cities and urban areas.

Return-to-work policies are one of the main motivations drawing Americans back to built-up areas.

When Covid-19 hit in 2020, more than 61 percent of people were working from home — leading many homeowners to consider larger homes with more space to live and work.

According to a survey by real estate firm Redfin between May and June of this year, back-to-work policies motivate one in 10 U.S. home sellers to move.

For Stephanie, an author and copywriter of children's books, the end of the work-from-home policy was not a consideration, but she wanted to get closer to others in her field again.

“I felt disconnected from everything and far enough away from the action that I didn't know what was happening in my industry,” she told DailyMail.com.

Politics was a consideration, and she also struggled with how remote the area was. 'If we wanted to go to a zoo, a children's museum or a bookstore, it would be a whole day trip. We had to travel an hour to get to a medical specialist, while here everything is a twenty-minute drive, so that makes a big difference,” she says.

'It affected our daily lives because we like to have access to things in the city. Our four-year-old son is also going to school next year, so that also played a role.'

There was also a huge growth in the number of people moving to Knoxville and Chattanooga at the time, Stephanie said, which meant residents were being pushed out of the cities and into smaller nearby towns.

“We saw a lot of movement and a lot of growth, but not necessarily the infrastructure to support it, so that was a big challenge for us,” she said.

The couple bought their 2,500-square-foot estate sight unseen and sold it earlier this year.

“There was a point where we decided we had to wait two years before we could sell it and not realize the added value,” she said.

“We put the house up for sale in April and it took several months to sell, just like when the market fell and interest rates rose.

“Property values ​​had skyrocketed, so we sold it for 70 percent more than we bought it for. But now that we're back here, prices in California have also gone up, so we didn't walk away with a big amount of money.”

Stephanie and Wesley, who work in the catering industry, are now renting a home. “We pay three times as much to live where we live now, but the premium is worth it for the improvement in quality of life,” she added.

“When we got to Tennessee, we both said we would have liked to rent for a year, just to get a feel for the area and where we would have been better off landing.”

Stephanie and Wesley may feel lucky that they were able to sell their home for a profit, as Redfin warned that some homeowners could face a loss if they are forced to sell to return to the office.

Real estate agent Shauna Pendleton said she has a few clients who are selling their home in Covid boomtown Boise, Idaho, after just a year because their Seattle-based employer requires them to return to the office.

Because they bought the house when prices were near their peak, they will likely have to sell at a loss, she said.

“My salespeople both work for the same company, which told them they had to be in the office three days a week or they would lose their jobs,” Pendleton said.

“They'll probably have to take a $100,000 loss on their house. Their new home in Seattle won't be anywhere near the size of their home in Boise, and their mortgage interest rates will be much higher.”

However, not all Americans are moving back to the big cities; some are fleeing New York and San Francisco in search of lower taxes and a cheaper cost of living in Texas and Florida.

It comes as data this week showed a growing number of homeowners are selling their properties at a loss as peak prices start to fall during the pandemic.

Three percent of all homes sold in the U.S. between May and July sold for less than what owners bought them for, separate data from Redfin showed, thanks to high interest rates and an exodus of workers returning to the office.

San Francisco topped the charts by a country mile for the area where sellers were hit hardest, with 12.3 percent of homeowners passing on their properties at a loss, costing them an average of as much as $100,000.