East of Los Angeles in California’s secluded desert, the Joshua Tree area was the state’s hottest real-estate market during the pandemic. Now higher interest rates, a bloated short-term rental market and the return to pre-Covid normalcy have brought the market back down to earth.
The Wall Street Journal: Joshua Tree, Once Quiet and Quirky, Is California’s Hottest Real-Estate Market
Real-estate prices around the high desert national park nearly doubled during the pandemic
Dwell: Darling Desert Escape represented by Joshua Tree Modern
Original homestead cabin completely remodeled and updated to a single-family residential Modernist marvel located in Flamingo Heights, north of Yucca Valley
"We're Getting Out of L.A. and Going to Joshua Tree": Why the Desert Area Is Booming
Longtime real-estate broker Bryan Wynwood "I've been extraordinarily busy for five years." His clientele has become more and more affluent as Hollywood A-listers and heavy hitters have escaped to the desert, pushing prices out of many old-timers' reach.
LA Times article about Joshua Tree during the coronavirus pandemic.
Bryan Wynwood, owner of Joshua Tree Modern Real Estate, said, “Every call I get is related to the coronavirus. Some of them are from city dwellers worried about being stuck in the center of a metropolis that loses control of its basic public services.”
New York Times article featuring Bryan Wynwood’s listing near the National Park.
Micro-resort located on the southern edge of Joshua Tree, a desert community with a population of about 7,400, and is a little more than two hours east of Los Angeles and 45 minutes northeast of Palm Springs. You need only to hike up a wash next to the property to enter Joshua Tree National Park.
Los Angeles Times feature on vacation rentals in the Joshua Tree area.
“I tell them the truth,” said Bryan Wynwood, a real estate broker in Joshua Tree who owns a vacation rental in town. “The days of homes here selling for $60,000 to $100,000 are over — never to return. Today, entry houses are $150,000 to $200,000. ”
San Francisco Gate feature on unique homesteader cabin near Joshua Tree National Park, listed and sold by Bryan Wynwood
"It's a nascent burgeoning area where artists who traditionally don't have money find dwellings," says Bryan Wynwood of Joshua Tree Modern. "Joshua Tree is always on those 'hippest towns in America' lists. Twentynine Palms is the next town over. Joshua Tree's prices are starting to push up a little bit, and some of those people are looking at Twenty Nine Palms."