How is development of communication technologies going to affect house prices?

When "real" virtual reality is available, and when it is almost indistinguishable from physical reality (except for touch and smell), it will make it irrelevant to live in cities like New York or San Francisco. Those cities will not command a price premium in housing any more and house prices will go down, that's one view ...

Instead, the author of this article on the New York Times thinks that the price premium will actually increase, because people still want to stick together, and more so now than before.

I think that his time frame is different from mine. We are only into 10 years of Internet adoption on a broad base. It is very early to draw conclusions about these trends. We do not have real virtual reality, only some limited communication tools, and even so, people are able to work remotely and yet be part of a global conversation.

Also, we are at the very beginning of what could be a prolonged housing slump, we'll see what happens ...