By Carolyn Weber |
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Michelle and Steve Dolge, who live in Chevy Chase, D.C., bought this property in Cambridge, Maryland, last year as a vacation home. Courtesy photo
In June 2020, Chevy Chase, D.C., resident Michelle Dolge traveled to Cambridge, Maryland, to help a friend prepare her second home for a pandemic-modified “beach week” visit by their teenage daughters and the girls’ friends. During her visit to the Eastern Shore town, Michelle recalled a house there that had caught her eye when she was browsing online real estate listings during the early weeks of the pandemic. The two women drove past the property so she could check it out. “I fell in love instantly,” Michelle says of the grand 1896 Victorian on the Choptank River. “I called my husband on the way home, and within three days we owned it.”
As some families migrate away from city centers amid the coronavirus pandemic and move to more remote locations in Maryland, home sales and prices in these once-quiet outposts are booming. If the trend continues, economists believe, it could trigger a resurgence for communities that have been in decline.
Once-quiet remote Maryland counties that have been in decline see strongest home sales baltimoresun.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from baltimoresun.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Kimberly Alster first purchased property near Deep Creek Lake in Maryland’s Garrett County 12 years ago. At the time, the idea was to use the home for frequent family vacations. When the pandemic struck, however, the Alsters decided to trade city life for the great outdoors and move permanently. In doing so, families like the Alsters are fueling a housing boom in locations not accustomed to such activity.
Alster, an information technology project manager for a pharmaceuticals company, left Pittsburgh and moved nearly full-time to Deep Creek with her family as the coronavirus crisis was spreading. Then her company closed its Pittsburgh location and she started working entirely remotely. “We came and never left,” she wrote in an email, later adding that the family now spends 80% of their time at the Deep Creek house and plans to sell the Pittsburgh house by the end of the year.