Like many visitors, Joe Schneider’s dream was to live in Ocean City.
Schneider, wife Maureen, daughter Olivia and son Jake loved the beach and everything else about the Jersey Shore. Everything, that is, except the commute from their Huntingdon Valley, PA, home. But in 2009, Schneider caught what might be the next great wave of fulltime OC residents. He traded the traditional office setting for his laptop and phone and now lives his dream.
A sales executive with Jimcor Agencies, a managing general agent servicing retail insurance businesses, Schneider works primarily from his new Ocean City home. He says that his productivity has increased, he spends more time with his family and his quality of life is better than he ever could have imagined.
“I understand the benefits of working alongside my (co-workers) but now I am giving my employer a more effective nine hours,” he says. “I’m not walking out of the building and stopping work at 6 p.m. I’m working on something, maybe at 9 p.m.” And despite sometimes odd and random hours working, he now has more energy and time to serve as an assistant coach in his son’s youth football program.
He is not alone.
According to 2015 research by Globalworkplaceanalytics.com, 3.7 million people “telecommute” at least half of the time and the ranks of remote workers have grown 103 percent since 2005. And while the employee population grew 1.9 percent between 2013 and 2014, the telecommuter population grew 5.6 percent during the same time period, the organization said. And currently half of the workforces hold jobs compatible with telecommuting at least part of the time, its research showed.
Ocean City’s Mike DeVlieger, a Recruitment Partner with a major consulting firm, said that they have one of the largest remote workforces in the world. “Very few people report to a dedicated office,” he said. “Only the senior level executives have actual offices in the major markets. The rest of the office space is used as flexible space.” “Today’s technology allows me to interact and collaborate with coworkers that are located regionally and internationally with ease.”
The point is not lost on Ocean City realtors such as Pete Madden of Berkshire Hathaway.
“Without a doubt, remote workers are definitely a niche we want to target,” he said. “There are advantages to getting families into Ocean City fulltime, enrolling their children in our school system and contributing to our economy.”
Madden said that he is seeing “more and more families moving into town, and it becomes more viable to live here because at least one spouse is able to work from home.”
Chad Gallagher is a project management consultant with PMMetrix, based in Uwchland, PA. He formerly lived in Chester Springs, PA with his wife Kristin and daughters Brynn, 8, and Mia, 10. Like Schneider, Chad found his commute unwieldy given the amount of time he and his family wanted to spend in Ocean City. Currently, he is managing a client’s $5 million capital project from his Ocean City home and is working “remotely, 100 percent, for two years now,” he says.
Gallagher had an epiphany working for his previous employer which led him to his current lifestyle.
“I drove for more than an hour and clocked into this huge corporate campus,” he said. “Then I went into a work station and sat there all by myself. I was actually working remotely within this huge complex. It was crazy.”
Now, during some of the time he would have been battling traffic, Gallagher meets up with a group of friends and goes stand-up paddle boarding on a regular basis.
He said Ocean City’s geography puts him “within striking distance” of major East Coast business centers like New York, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., and today’s technology allows him to connect with clients literally worldwide.
According to Gary Jessel, broker-owner at Fox Real Estate, “these days you are speaking with someone for business and you don’t know where they are actually located at the time. All you need is a phone and I-Pad or Smartphone setup.”
For this reason, Jessel believes Ocean City’s year-round population figures “may be understated. People have multiple homes, multiple offices, and with today’s construction and winterization, they are spending just as much time here as they are in say, Florida or Philadelphia. They just aren’t necessarily showing up on the voter registration rolls or their drivers’ license address.”
Technology may be the gateway that allows more folks to live in Ocean City fulltime, but the allure remains to be Ocean City itself, Gallagher said.
“What you get in Ocean City in terms of activities, environment and services is really a well-kept secret. You have an idea about it when you visit here but you really see it when you are here all the time. We made the decision for our children, to provide them the opportunity to grow up here.”
