I work from home. I made this decision during the pandemic.
It’s a good working environment. We don’t have small pets climbing over my keyboard during a Zoom call. The kid is grown. The background noise consists of the landscaping crew and some neighbors who have loud cars. If we need anything, we have the typical Texas suburban amenities, meaning supermarkets or big-box superstores that offer pickup readily available. Amazon brings us other staples.
I make this brag montage because I ran across a LawnStarter study in which Texas cities fared well when it comes to remote working. And it seems obvious: North Texas had four of the 194 cities in the study’s top 10.
Frisco, which tends to top a lot of livability studies, ranked first, of course. Arlington was fourth and Plano eighth. Irving ranked 25th, McKinney 30th, Garland 42nd, Mesquite 59th, and Grand Prairie 63rd. Dallas and Fort Worth aren’t suburbs, of course, but they ranked third and 78th, respectively. Earlier this year, SmartAsset ranked Plano third on its list of best cities to work from home. (Frisco didn’t make that list).
LawnStarter, an Austin-based startup that offers lawn tips and is fully remote itself, commissioned the study for its website and sent out news releases touting the results. You’d think a study like this is a business play, of course.
But the methodology and the effort justified its findings. Plus, California doesn’t rank so well — nine of the worst 10 are in California — and a business such as LawnStarter has to do business in the Golden State, too.
“High on costs and low on good workplace factors like available personal space, California may be better for visiting than telecommuting.” according to LawnStarter.
In its study, LawnStarter considered remote job opportunities, internet connectivity, cost of living, and availability of personal workspace, among 20 total factors.
The study’s methodology also determined that North Texas cities, earned many of the highest scores in the Opportunity and Connectivity categories and the lack of a state income tax means more take-home money.
Developers are also paying attention. Tom Woliver of Oxland Advisors pays attention to home design, specifically how home offices fit into their spaces. He kept that in mind when designing the vast Painted Tree development in McKinney.
“People are going to be working from home,” Woliver said. “They’re probably going to do more daytime activities because they’re not at the office.”
Other conclusions from the study:
- Large cities tend to be safe bets for remote workers, despite the trend that claustrophobic remote workers are flocking to the suburbs for more space.
- Eight of the top 10 cities have at least 250,000 residents. The other two are mid-size cities with populations between 100,000 and 250,000.
- Suburbs might offer more breathing room and mainstream amenities, but bigger cities boast more job opportunities and options in general.
Of course, remote working has its disadvantages. You don’t have the opportunities to share office time with colleagues, which can hinder advancement possibilities. Project management suffers when everyone is out of the office.
Another reason people switched to remote working was a long commute. (This Washington Post calculator will influence you). I know I spent enough time in the car on D-FW freeways. I needed back some time, which is what M. Gloria González Morales of Claremont Graduate University determined in the study.
“Time is one of those valuable resources that are finite, and this is one of the advantages of flexible work arrangements: People have more control over the structure and management of their time.”
