Fremont, Hayward among top 10 cities for remote work

If you have to work from home, Fremont is one of the best midsize cities in the nation to do it in, according to a study by business insurance research firm AdvisorSmith.

And Hayward is pretty good too.

Fremont and Hayward ranked 4th and 7th, respectively, in the company’s Top 10 list of cities considered desirable for people who work from home — a silver lining in the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

AdvisorSmith examined nearly 2,500 American cities and ranked them using five factors that could make spending almost every working minute in them a little easier: availability of high-speed internet, housing prices, crime rates, parkland and weather.

Fremont’s fourth-place ranking was bolstered by the wide availability of high-speed internet.

About 98% of Fremont residents had access to two or more broadband providers offering internet connections at speeds of 100 megabits per second or faster, compared with an average of 67% in other midsize cities.

Fremont also has 0.07 of an acre of parkland per resident, which may not sound like a lot but is more than three times the average amount available in midsize U.S. cities.

The city also scored well in weather and low crime rates, more so than for its housing costs.

Using Zillow’s data to determine the average price of three-bedroom houses in the surveyed cities, AdvisorSmith found that at a little more than $1 million, Fremont’s homes cost almost three times as much as the national average of $361,778, according to company spokeswoman Brenda Franco. Hayward’s $673,000 average price was much higher than the national average, too, but at least relatively more affordable than Fremont’s.

The top midsize city for working from home was Chesapeake, Virginia. The best small city was Fairview Park, Ohio, and the best large city was Scottsdale, Arizona.