Young Professionals

Best Cities For Young Professionals
Matt Woolsey



Head to the Big Apple, and your chances of getting the corner office might not be as far off as you think.

That's because New York City tops our list as the No. 1 city for young professionals.

That likely comes as a shock to, well, no one. Many of America's best companies, as determined by Forbes rankings of the best 400 big businesses and best 200 small businesses, including financial giant Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people ) and media conglomerate News Corp. (nyse: NWS - news - people ) are in New York. Throw in New York's bars, clubs and world-class dining, and you get a city teaming with young professionals.

San Francisco clocked in at No. 2 and Atlanta at No. 3. Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston and Seattle filled spots four through seven, and Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Denver closed out the top 10.

Behind The Numbers Our list was compiled by tracking where the graduates of top universities across the country ended up 10 years after commencement; where the best business opportunities exist; which cities had the most young and unmarried people; and which cities paid young professionals the best.

To see where graduates of elite schools chose to pursue their careers, we looked at Class of 1997 alumni location data from six elite universities across the country--Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern and Rice. The data indicated where graduates have settled 10 years later, and where their professional lives have matured.

We then excluded alumni that remained close to school. Harvard grads in Massachusetts--nixed; Dukies who stayed in North Carolina--gone; Stanford Cardinals roosting in California--tossed. The goal: to determine which cities offer such strong opportunities for young professionals that they're willing to pick up and move across the country for them.

Some cities are bigger than others, of course. So we adjusted where elite grads ended up against overall population size to measure the respective concentrations of young professionals. This allowed smaller cities such as Portland and Austin to compete equally with heavyweights such as New York and Los Angeles.

Then we stirred the locations of prized jobs into the mix. Each year, Forbes selects America's 400 best big businesses and 200 best small businesses. We used the locations of those 600 companies to determine which cities had the best professional opportunities for the under-35 set.

Money is important too. To figure out how far yearly income will go, we measured cities' variations in starting salary using data from New York-based Mercer Human Resource Consulting and adjusted it for cost of living with our own Forbes index; the idea being that the more greenhorn grads a city can attract with a decent salary to cost of living ratio, the more likely they'll stay and develop in that area.

Of course, even the most driven young professionals need to let off steam. With that in mind, the final metric was measured which cities had the highest share of never-married people in their 20s and 30s. Never married is an important qualifier. For example, of the 40 largest cities, Salt Lake City has the third-highest population share of people ages 25 to 34, but its standing as No. 27 in the never-married category really puts a damper on the nightlife.

The bottom 10 cities were brought down by a variety of causes. Salary to cost of living submarined Miami, Norfolk, Va., and San Antonio. The inability to attract top grads and top companies hurt Detroit and Las Vegas, and all our measurements converged on Tampa, Fla., beating it down to last place on our list.

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Nashville West shopping

Nashville West developers bet big on Charlotte PikeShopping center to house more than 20 stores

By CHAS SISK, The Tennessean

Even their own wives couldn't believe what developers Mark McDonald and William Oldacre were proposing.

An up-market shopping center on the western end of Charlotte Pike? It was too much to believe.


"They said, 'You're out of your minds. No one will go to Charlotte to shop,' " McDonald recalled. "And I said, 'You will go. It's more convenient than Green Hills.' "

McDonald, Oldacre and partner Thomas Newton are betting big that they can reshape the perceptions of people such as their spouses: affluent men and women who live in Nashville's upscale neighborhoods of Belle Meade, Green Hills and Hillwood.

Late last year, the developers' $135 million Nashville West shopping center opened on a 100-acre expanse between Interstate 40 and Charlotte Pike, bringing major national retailers to a street that historically has tended to attract few businesses larger than independent grocery stores, fast-food restaurants and small car lots.

With this project, Newton Oldacre McDonald believes it can turn the western end of Charlotte Pike into a retail center capable of challenging established trading posts in Green Hills and Cool Springs. And to make it possible, they're pouring millions of dollars into road improvements, landscaping and an expanded public park.

The investment signals a trend that is just beginning to take hold in Nashville: Developers are beginning to believe that they can build successful new shopping centers, at least partially, from the remains of old, failing ones.

Others may follow

Nashville West's fate could point the way for others interested in turning around similar outposts among Nashville's aging shopping corridors.

"It's having a great impact, and it's only going to get better as they add stores, the park," said Metro Councilman Billy Walls, whose district includes Nashville West and the surrounding neighborhood.

"It (the site) had no future. No one was even looking at that until these developers came and said, 'We're proposing this.' "

McDonald and Oldacre said they had been eyeing the property since the late 1980s. Then the property was partially occupied by the Hillwood Plaza shopping center, a strip mall anchored by Wal-Mart. That center began to slide in 1998, when Wal-Mart relocated to another shopping center farther west on Charlotte Pike.

But Newton Oldacre McDonald did not decide to take a chance until three years ago, when H.G. Hill Realty readied plans for the $70 million Hill Center at Green Hills, a 48,000-square-foot shopping center on the site of an old grocery store.

That project convinced them that a redevelopment project could work, Oldacre said.

20 stores planned

The first Nashville West store, Costco, opened in November. It has since been followed by a Target, Dick's Sporting Goods and Best Buy, among others.

Plans call for building more than 20 stores with a total of 700,000 square feet of retail space, the equivalent of 16 acres under roof.
Newtown Oldacre McDonald also envisions building six to 10 restaurants, 50,000 square feet of out-parcel space, condos and a renovated Metro park.

According to the firm's research, more than one in five households within a 10-minute drive of Nashville West earn $100,000 a year or more. That's nearly twice the ratio found in Davidson County as a whole.

Newton Oldacre McDonald believes that many of these people shop in either the increasingly crowded retail center along Hillsboro Pike in Green Hills or trek to the area around CoolSprings Galleria in Franklin.

Nashville West is one-fifth of the distance to Cool Springs for Belle Meade residents and gets far less traffic than Green Hills.

"There are no large (undeveloped) tracts of land to develop, so what you can do is take an existing site and market to the demographics," said Brian Forrester, an agent with The Shopping Center Group in Nashville. "You've got to be creative. … This is a creative project."

Landscaping costs $3 M

To lure upscale shoppers to Nashville West, Newton Oldacre McDonald strived to create a shopping experience that exceeds that of the typical shopping center. The firm spent $3 million on landscaping, including restoring and extending a 19th-century stone wall to give the center a unique look.

The firm is spending $2 million on improvements to Metro's H.G. Hill Park. Those plans include building a 4-acre park that will remain under Metro control but will be maintained by the tenants of Nashville West.

Another advantage to the location: It's not as likely to have many competitors. Shopping centers in Nashville's suburbs frequently have to fend off competitors located across the street.

But Nashville West is tucked into a fairly developed area, with the hilly topography reducing the chances that another center will enter the market soon. That means that any competitor would also have to redevelop, likely at a considerable expense.

"We don't believe there's another site like this," McDonald said.
"If there is one, we can't imagine what it is."

How Much is To Much?

The 60-storey house for just one family

This 60-storey house is for just one family.
India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is planning a palace in the heart of Mumbai with helipad, health club, hanging gardens and six floors of car parking.

His wife, mother and three children will live there with him, looked after by 600 live-in staff.
Construction has already started on what will eventually be a 175m tower and planners are aiming to complete it in September 2008.

Earlier this year, Forbes rated Mr Ambani as the richest resident Indian with a net worth of US$20.1 billion.

He came 14th in Forbes' 2007 worldwide rankings.

Currently he is chairman of petroleum major Reliance Industries Ltd, India's largest private sector company

The building, already worth £500 million, could start a rush on skyscrapers.

THE DAILY MAIL

housing market

US HOUSING MARKET

Live in Seattle? If you own your home, chances are you're celebrating.

That's because the city's median home price in the first quarter of this year hit $380,200, an increase of 12.3% from a year earlier, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Median home prices in the Pacific Northwest as a whole soared; in Portland, Ore., prices jumped 8.9%, and in Salem, Ore., they grew 15.6%.

Southern metros also boasted gains. In San Antonio, prices went up 11.2%, and Austin, Tex., prices climbed 5.4%. Charlotte, N.C., and Raleigh, N.C., rose 6.4% and 6.3%, and Richmond, Va., and Norfolk, Va., improved 6.2% and 5.9%.

"What we're seeing now are the areas which still have a strong economy, but didn't have the overheated prices [during the housing boom], are the ones holding on strong now," says Kermit Baker, a senior research fellow at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies.

In the Northeast, the New York City metropolitan area turned in a steady 1% growth rate, and smaller metros like Albany, N.Y.; Trenton, N.J.; and Allentown Pa.--which improved by 6.3%, 7.1% and 5.8% respectively--helped overcome Boston's continuing slump to lift the Northeast to a 1.2% overall price growth, making it the only region in the black.
Now the bad news.

Cloudy Skies Median home prices in Florida are down, according to NAR: Tampa by 2%, and Sarasota, Palm Bay and Daytona by an average of 9%. Overall, Florida prices plunged 25%, making the Sunshine State not so sunny. Miami, however, which had been hamstrung early in the housing downturn, improved by 2%. The rally may be tenuous however, as 23% of Miami housing loans are subprime, according to First American LoanPerformance, a mortgage data provider.

"We've had 30 subprime lenders go under, which leads to a tightening of credit," says Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a New York-based real estate appraisal and consultancy firm of lenders nationwide. "That adds one more barrier to transactions, something that couldn't have come at a more delicate time for the housing market. On a national level, there are a lot of markets which are going to have some problems."

The Gulf Coast, where home prices had roared back at a double-digit clip the year following Hurricane Katrina, is one such market. Biloxi, Miss., grew by 15.7%, and Baton Rouge, La., by 9.7%, but the subprime hammer came down on New Orleans, where a 20% delinquency rate on subprime loans contributed to an 11% drop in home values, the NAR reports.

Worse News To Come? For many markets, things may get worse before they get better. Nationwide, prices fell by 6.6%, a number that makes sense at this point in the housing cycle, experts say.

"When housing prices slip, nothing really changes until you try to sell, which is what we've had happen in the last couple of months," says Miller. "I don't think the housing slowdown has fully hit the national economy yet."

Overexpansion was a problem for most metro areas. Homeowner vacancy rates stood at 2.8% in the first quarter of this year, a statistically significant rise from the 2.1% rate a year ago and the 1.7% average between 1995 and 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Those high inventory numbers flatten prices and make new development less lucrative.
"It's becoming more difficult to put together financing for new development projects," says Miller. "That'll actually provide some constraint on supply, but that's a couple years down the road. You figure the lead on new development is probably two years, so it's going to be a couple years before units stop coming off the conveyor belt."

Moving forward, there is concern surrounding the strength of the national macro economy. In the first quarter of 2007, growth came in at a disappointing 1.3%--hampered by 4% inflation--but the Federal Reserve predicts growth between 2.5% and 3% for the remainder of 2007.

"We do have a massive inventory correction, which will happen a lot easier and a lot less painfully if it continues to happen during an economic expansion," says Baker. "The fear is now that even though the direct housing hit was absorbed, the indirect hit could be serious too. We're into that now, but it doesn't look like it's enough to throw the economy into recession."
Some might disagree. Fears about the ripple effect of the housing market have traders particularly bearish.

The S&P/Case-Shiller housing futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (nyse: CME - news - people ) is based on repeat sales of homes across 10 markets ranging from Boston to San Diego. There, traders are betting on a 4.5% decline from now until next year.

"There's a limitation to the futures market, because it only trades one year forward," says Fritz Siebel, a broker with Traditional Financial Services, the largest trader of housing futures. "For 2007 to 2008, the market doesn't look good, but it doesn't mean there's not a bottom around the corner."

Source: Matt Woolsey, Forbes.com

Buyer's agency

Making an attractive home-purchase offer

Buyer's agent can be an invaluable tool

It's easy to assume that negotiating is adversarial. You, the buyer, are on one side -- the side that wants to buy a property for the lowest price possible. The opposition on the other side is the seller who wants to sell for the highest price possible. You're locked in a tug of war to see which side will win.

It's more productive to look at a negotiation as a problem-solving process. You and the seller may have different ideas about what price the property should sell for. However, you're united in a common goal of consummating a deal. The challenge is to resolve your differences through a process of give and take until you either reach your common goal, or decide to go your separate ways.

Of course, you have to arrive at a mutually agreeable selling price for a sale to go through. Sometimes this will happen quickly; sometimes it's a drawn-out process that can last over days or even weeks.

HOUSE HUNTING TIP: Patience can be your ally. Sometimes rushing the process can quicken its demise. In fact, you may be better off waiting before starting the process if you think that the asking price is too high.

For the first time in years, we are in a market where some home sellers -- typically those who bought recently -- won't be able to sell their home for a profit. But, they may need to test the market to be sure.

If this is the case, the best negotiating strategy may be to offer nothing until the sellers are close to reducing their asking price. There can be a benefit to making an offer just before a price reduction is made. If you wait until the price is lowered, you could end up paying a higher price if other buyers suddenly become interested.

In order to make sure you know that the sellers are contemplating reducing the price, ask your real estate agent to talk to the sellers' agent and make sure that the sellers are made aware of your interest. Don't be bashful about the fact that you are interested, but not at the current price. This way, you may receive a call when the sellers decide they'd like to see an offer from you.

When you make an offer and there's no competition from other buyers, your initial offer price should leave you room to move up in price. But, it should not be so low that it's insulting to the seller. Otherwise he or she might not respond at all. An offer that's much lower than the market would give the seller the impression that you can't afford more, so there's no point in issuing a counteroffer.

Buyers often think that if they start too high initially, they'll end up paying too much. Your initial offer price should be good enough to entice the seller into a dialogue. It's a price to get the ball rolling. From there, you can move up in small increments, if necessary.

Don't get so caught up in negotiating the price that you overlook other opportunities for consensus building. Most good negotiations have a sense of fairness about them. During the process of your negotiation, you and your agent should brainstorm all the possible ways that you can accommodate the sellers.

Do they need a quick close? If so, they might be willing to give more on price for a speedy close. However, you might want to hold up offering this information at the beginning of the dialogue. That way, you have something more of value that you can offer the sellers in exchange for a further price concession.

THE CLOSING: When you get close on price, offering to split the difference can put a seal on the deal.

By Dian Hymer, Inman News

Active-adult communities

Active-adult communities sell a dream

Older baby boomers find new ways to live, learn

By JULIE B. HAIRSTON

One of the attractions on a recent day at Seasons at Laurel Canyon was an exhibition tennis match.

Donna and Curtis Finney are swept up in a social whirl where "everybody wants to meet everybody, and everybody loves everybody," said Curtis, 59.

With hundreds of retirees and early baby boomers now moving into metro Atlanta's new active-adult communities and even more communities like them on the drawing board, a new blueprint for life after 55 is taking shape.

Active-adult communities are suburban subdivisions whose residents must be 55 or older. Typically, these developments contain such home designs as master suites on main floors, and optional services, such as housekeeping and lawn maintenance, that appeal to people who want to spend less time with taxing chores. These communities also offer coordinated leisure activities geared to social interaction and physical fitness.

The prototypical active-adult buyer is swapping decades of equity and savings to realize pent-up dreams. With life expectancy increasing and baby boomers set to enjoy a healthier retirement span than any previous generation — not to mention the largest intergenerational transfer of inherited wealth — developers are probing their habits and appealing to their preferences to capture housing and leisure dollars.

"What we try to do is create a lifestyle," said Bob Rademacher, Atlanta division executive for Levitt & Sons, the developer of Seasons. "It's how you're going to live. Once you've decided that [lifestyle] fits you, we can find you a house."

The first phase of Pulte/Del Webb's the Village at Deaton Creek in Hall County is 80 percent sold in 12 months and, despite a slumping market for other types of housing, sales remain brisk.
According to real estate database Metrostudy, Deaton Creek was the top-selling active-adult community in a metro Atlanta market that currently contains a 5.2-month supply of unsold new homes. More than half those homes fall into the same price range as the homes in the Village at Deaton Creek.

Jan Cooper, vice president of operations in Georgia for Pulte/Del Webb, the nation's largest builder of active-adult communities, said the Village is experiencing 25 to 30 closings per month.
"It's doing what we anticipated it would do," Cooper said. "We based a lot of our demand on the local population."

As with the Village at Deaton Creek, Pulte/Del Webb's Sun City will kick off its sales with a series of "lifestyle seminars" at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, May 24-26.

Currently, the company's lead bank contains 11,000 names, said David Vitek, president of Pulte/Del Webb's south Georgia division. Sales at Deaton Creek were launched with lifestyle seminars at nearby Château Élan last year.

Plans also are under way for a third Pulte/Del Webb active-adult community in Greensboro, east of Atlanta on Lake Oconee.

The national home sales slowdown has affected active-adult sales slightly, but that segment is feeling less of the pinch than other sectors of Pulte's market, said Dave Schreiner, national vice president for active-adult business development at Pulte/Del Webb.

"Interest in our [active-adult] communities, judged by the level of traffic and lead generation, has stayed very high, and we're not seeing any signs of interest waning," Schreiner said.
Florida 'halfbacks'

Cooper said a majority of the Village's residents moved from other parts of the Atlanta area.
A few of the new residents are retirees from the Snow Belt and a few are "halfbacks," people who retired to Florida but came back a little farther north to escape high housing prices, skyrocketing insurance costs and hostile weather.

The Finneys, who previously lived in Gwinnett County, considered retiring to a Del Webb community in Florida but changed their minds when they learned of the plans for Deaton Creek.
Their decision was confirmed while they were visiting friends near Orlando in February, when a line of tornadoes devastated the community where they were staying.

"Atlanta and the Southeast generally are a very bright spot for us right now," Schreiner said.
Rademacher of Levitt & Sons said the new active-adult strategy is to bring these lifestyle communities closer to the urban centers where retirees spent their careers and family life, maintaining established connections. Earlier lifestyle developments concentrated around resort areas, but now companies like Levitt and Del Webb are bringing the resort sensibility within easy reach.
"Now, it's around the corner and it's local," Rademacher said.

Same stage of life

Uniformly, the new residents of metro Atlanta's active-adult communities said they were attracted to their developments by the prospect of spending time with people at the same stage of life. That sort of self-selection is common.

But how they're spending that time is changing previous images of grizzled geezers in rocking chairs. Contemporary retirees are more likely to rock with their guitars or climb over rocks with rappelling gear.

Cooper said more than 20 interest clubs have already formed among the residents of the Village at Deaton Creek, including a singles club.

The Village's line dancing club is already rehearsing for a performance at the grand opening of the community's clubhouse later this year.

Jim and Nancy Davidson are recent additions to the Village, having moved from their home in Lawrenceville at the end of March. The Davidsons have friends who live happily in Del Webb communities in other parts of the country, and they decided several years ago that the active-adult concept suited their vision of how to live after retirement.

"We knew this is what we wanted. It was just a matter of where to do it," said Nancy.

So far, Jim, 65, and Nancy, 61, have joined the Village book club, walking club and a bunco card group. They attend luncheons and the endless variety of community seasonal celebrations, such as the upcoming Cinco de Mayo party on Saturday.

And they are looking forward to the clubhouse opening, when even more activity opportunities will open up.

"The activities are almost unlimited," Nancy said. "If they don't have it, just ask and they'll start it for you."

In addition to the outdoor leisure pool and the indoor lap pool, the clubhouse will contain 8,000 square feet of space devoted to fitness including yoga and tai chi as well as a billiard room.
The full-time activities director is coordinating group trips to Braves games and the Georgia Aquarium. Plans for a residents group tour of Australia next year are under way.

Quick friendships

Pulte/Del Webb's Vitek is directing the development of Georgia's first Sun City community in Spalding County. The 3,400-homesite community — roughly half the size of the mammoth Sun City Anthem near Las Vegas — will include a 38,000-square-foot amenity center, a championship golf course and a softball field.

At other Sun City communities, Vitek said, the well-drilled softball teams "are so competitive that they end up playing in the local leagues."

For the new residents of Seasons at Laurel Canyon, a Levitt & Sons community near Canton, community life started in the sales office, long before the moving vans arrived.
Judy and Charlie Dollar, formerly Cobb County residents, encountered a number of their future neighbors as they worked out the details of their new houses. "By the time we moved in, it was like old home week," said Judy, 66.

Bruce Morgan, 60, moved to Seasons from Athens after his daughter graduated from the University of Georgia.

"I loved Athens, but [the neighborhood] was a much younger group of people," Morgan said. Finding companions for social activities was difficult during the day, or even on weeknights when parents were helping kids with homework.

But Seasons has put him into a whole swirl of activity he can join according to his own schedule and preferences.

He started with tennis lessons, even though he's never played seriously before.
"It's like we're 13 years old again and starting all over," Morgan said.