Latent Needs Concerning Telework Migration from the Perspective of “Aggregation of Real Estate Transactions” ―Focusing on the case Study on the Marginal Edge Suburb for Commuting to Hiroshima and Fukuoka Cities―

The rapid expansion of telework during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan brought a delightful opportunity for telework migration to Japanese rural areas that had not seen significant progress before the Pandemic. However, as the infection of COVID-19 began to subside, telework migration has shown some new aspects, such as an extension of commuting limits and simply relocating and moving to the edge suburbs.
Considering that, this study takes the position that the area around JR Shin-Yamaguchi Station in Yamaguchi City is a marginal edge suburb for commuting to Hiroshima and Fukuoka cities, and examines the latent needs of telework migration targeting the hybrid workers who work in both cities. Also, considering migration as a kind of aggregation of real estate transactions and migrants as its target customers, the authors of this paper have tried to conduct a questionnaire survey of experienced teleworkers in Hiroshima and Fukuoka prefectures in July 2022. We attempted to understand their primary push and pull factors of the telework migration, and the size of the potential demand for the telework migration to the area around JR Shin-Yamaguchi Station.
As a result, those who either themselves or their spouses are from or have lived in Yamaguchi Prefecture, plus those who have family and household reasons, such as nursing care for their parents, are the most likely to carry out telework migration. In addition, the size of the potential demand would be for approximately 3,400 people in the case where the telework implementation rate returns to the level at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.