I bought a home in rural America during the pandemic - now I'm returning to the city and counting the cost after a bad experience

Stephanie Campisi, her husband Wesley, and their young son decamped to remote Tennessee during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

They wanted to be closer to elderly members of Wesley's family who lived in the state, so the family left behind the Coachella Valley, California, at the very beginning of 2021. 

The couple bought a three-bedroom, three-story home for around $250,000 in eastern Tennessee - midway between Knoxville and Chattanooga. 

But just two and a half years later, they sold up and headed back to the Golden State, where they have been renting since September. 

Stephanie, 38, and Wesley, 45, are among the growing group of Americans who bought rural homes during the pandemic and are now heading back to cities and urban areas. 

Return-to-work policies are one of the main motivations drawing Americans back to built-up areas. 

When Covid-19 hit in 2020, over 61 percent of people worked from home - which led many homeowners to consider larger homes with more space to live and work in. 

According to a survey by real estate company Redfin between May and June this year, return-to-work policies are motivating one of every 10 US home sellers to relocate.

For Stephanie, a children's book author and copywriter, the end of work-from-home policies was not a consideration, but she wanted to get back closer to others in her line of work.

'I felt disconnected from everything and far enough away from the action that I didn't know what was happening in my industries,' she told DailyMail.com. 

Politics was a consideration, and she also struggled with how remote the area was. 'If we wanted to go to a zoo or a children's museum or a book shop, it would end up being a whole day trip. We had to travel an hour to get to a medical specialist, whereas here everything is a 20-minute drive so it makes a big difference,' she said.

'It affected our daily lives because we like to have access to city things. Our 4-year-old son also goes to school next year so that was a factor as well.'

There was also a boom in people relocating to Knoxville and Chattanooga at the time, Stephanie said, which meant that residents from the cities were being pushed out into smaller places nearby. 

'We saw a lot of movement and a lot of growth, but not necessarily the infrastructure to support it, so that was a big challenge for us,' she said.

The couple bought their 2,500-square foot property sight unseen, and sold it earlier this year.   

'There was a point where we decided we had to sit for two years before we could sell it and not realize the capital gains,' she said. 

'We listed the house in April and it took several months to sell as it was when the market was dropping and interest rates were increasing. 

'Property values had shot up so we sold it for 70 percent more than we bought it for, but moving back here the prices have also gone up in California, so we did not walk away with a huge sum.'

Stephanie and Wesley, who works in hospitality, are now renting a place. 'We're paying 3 times as much to live where we do now, but the premium is worth it for the quality of life upgrade,' she added.

'We both said when we arrived in Tennessee we wish we'd rented for a year, just to get a sense of the area and where we would've been better off landing.'

Stephanie and Wesley may be lucky that they were able to sell their home for a profit, as Redfin warned that some homeowners may lose out if they are forced to sell to return to the office. 

Real estate agent Shauna Pendleton said she has a pair of clients who are selling their home in Covid boomtown Boise, Idaho, after just a year because their Seattle-based employer is requiring them to return to the office. 

As they bought the home when prices were near their peak, they are likely to have to sell for a loss, she said.

'My sellers both work at the same company, which told them they have to be in the office three days a week or they'll lose their jobs,' Pendleton said.

'They’ll probably have to take a $100,000 loss on their home. Their new house in Seattle won’t be anything close to the size of their property in Boise, and their mortgage rate will be much higher.'

Not all Americans are moving back to major cities, however, with some fleeing New York and San Francisco in search of lower taxes and a cheaper cost of living in Texas and Florida.

It comes as data this week revealed that a growing number of homeowners are selling their properties at a loss as peak prices seen during the pandemic start to plummet. 

Three percent of all homes sold in the US between May and July returned less than the owners purchased them for, separate Redfin data showed, thanks to high interest rates and an exodus of workers returning to the office.

San Francisco topped the charts by a country mile for the area where sellers were worst-hit - with 12.3 percent of homeowners passing on their properties at a loss, costing them a whopping $100,000 on average.