CBRE: New York claims top US tech market as AI hiring surges
That in-person mandate, combined with average New York Metro tech wages of $130,538 annually in 2024 and Bay Area tech wages averaging $195,142, sustains strong homebuying demand in markets where origination volumes and mortgage activity remain elevated.
Beyond the coastal hubs, emerging tech markets including Dallas-Ft. Worth, which added 37,230 tech workers between 2022 and 2025, along with Nashville (+12,540) and Charlotte (+8,420), are widening the geographic opportunity for originators to engage the next generation of AI-employed borrowers.
AI specialists earning average annual salaries of $130,538 in New York and $195,142 in the San Francisco Bay Area represent a concentrated pool of high-income, creditworthy borrowers whose geographic movement directly shapes origination opportunity.
When 30,640 net new tech workers land in the New York Metro and the finance sector absorbs the bulk of them, that is a measurable shift in where well-qualified buyers are house-hunting, where purchase loan demand is building, and where brokers should be deepening lender relationships and refining their product mix.
The same logic applies in reverse in San Francisco, where a net loss of 23,900 tech workers between 2022 and 2025 has cooled a market that once generated some of the country’s largest loan balances.
