Raleigh : Forbes Magazine's #1 Place For Business And Careers

Raleigh Is America’s #1 Place To Do Business

Raleigh once again topped Forbes Magazine’s 13th annual list of The Best Places for Business and Careers.  Raleigh, N.C. is noted as one of those locales with a strong university presence helping fuel growth in the area. Raleigh and nearby Durham (ranked No. 31) get a strong boost from three elite schools in the surrounding area in University of North Carolina, Duke University & North Carolina State.

“Low business costs (18 percent below the national average) and a smart labor force (42 percent have a college degree) make Raleigh, North Carolina’s Capital City, an attractive spot for employers like Progress Energy,” the magazine wrote. “Job seekers get it: The net migration rate to Raleigh was the 2nd highest in the U.S. over the past five years.”

Forbes Magazine’s ranking of Best Places looks at the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. These range in size from the New York City metro, with to 11.6 million people, to Laredo, Texas, home to 252,000 people. They consider 12 metrics relating to job growth (past and projected), costs (business and living), income growth, educational attainment and projected economic growth.

Forbes also factors in quality of life issues like crime rates, cultural and recreational opportunities and net migration patterns. Lastly they included the number of highly ranked colleges in an area per their annual college rankings.

Slideshow: Raleigh Ranks #1 Place For Business and Careers

via realestateraleighdurham.com

Raleigh-Cary, NC : #2 Metro Market For New-Home Sales Share

Raleigh-Cary, NC #2 Real Estate Market : New Home Sales Share

Top 10 Markets for New-Home Sales Share (2010)
Metropolitan Statistical Area	New-home Sales	Total Sales Total	New-home Sale Share
El Paso, Texas	2,425	9,701	25.0%
Raleigh-Cary, N.C.	3,580	16,975	21.1%
San Antonio-New Braunfels, Texas	6,891	35,407	19.5%
Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, N.C.-S.C.	3,860	20,512	18.8%
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas	5,831	32,088	18.2%
Jacksonville, Fla.	3,909	22,749	17.2%
Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa	1,446	9,154	15.8%
Charleston-North Charleston-Summerville, S.C.	1,464	9,622	15.2%
Oklahoma City, Okla.	3,019	21,017	14.4%
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn.	3,380	25,342	13.3%

Note: 9 out of the Top 10 Markets Are In The South

Methodology: CoreLogic sorted the markets with the highest share of new-home sales. The analysis was performed on 2010 annual data for the top 100 markets with the most sales. It's very well-known that there are a lot of distressed markets and which markets they are. There is much less information on which markets are doing well. But instead of choosing performance, CoreLogic chose new-home sales, because if a market is near the top for new sales share then it's most likely doing relatively well.

Source: Raleigh-Cary, NC #2 Market For New-Home Sales Share

Keith Urban Rocks RBC Center - "Get Closer World Tour 2011"

Keith Urban “Gets Closer” in Raleigh NC

Keith Urban brought his “Get Closer World Tour” to Raleigh Saturday night, putting on an incredible performance.

The 43-year-old country star interspersed his many chart-topping country hits with a few new cuts, as usual. He waded through an ecstatic crowd to a tiny stage about 20 rows back and shouted “Who’s got the good seats now?”

Keith Urban fans got what they came for: an energetic, 2-hour-and-15-minute set filled with Urban trademarks including rapturous sing-a-longs, fun-loving real-time crowd shots, and soaring guitar solos that would impress Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton.Put it this way, when Urban emerged at around 8:45, virtually everyone stood up, and then didn’t sit down again until they climbed into their cars to go home.

Raleigh Real Estate Market : 14th Highest Performing Major Housing Market

Raleigh Real Estate Market Reveals Signs of Market Stability

The Raleigh Real Estate Market offered signs of improvement with home prices in the last quarter as the industry demonstrates more signs of stabilizing, according to Clear Capital's latest monthly Home Data Index Market Report.

U.S. quarterly prices drop another 2.3%; but uptick in distressed sale prices, combined with the upcoming summer buying season, could stabilize home prices. “The latest market report results through May suggest that home prices are starting to ease back from the heavy declines seen over the winter,” says Alex Villacorta, director of research and analytics at Clear Capital. “We are still far away from the strong demand needed to fully turn things around for the housing market. However, it is clear from the initial spring sales data that prices are softening, suggesting stabilization in the market."

Source: Raleigh Real Estate : 14th Highest Performing Major Housing Market

 

Raleigh NC Outperforms : Top 15 Best Cities For Job Growth

Raliegh NC Is Top Destination For Employment Activity

The Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce has announced that Raleigh ranks 14th out of 65 large cities in Joel Kotkin’s list of 2011 Best Cities for Job Growth, finishing ahead of such cities as Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Austin, Texas in quality of life. The survey found Raleigh outperformed all those cities in population growth and educational attainment, and all except Boston in median household-to-cost-of-living ratio, while having a better unemployment rate than Philadelphia and New York City. In his survey, Kotkin noted that most of the best performing big metros in job growth on the East Coast are located in financial and university centers, including Raleigh.

• From 2000 to 2010, Raleigh had a 46.3 percent increase in population, compared to Austin (20.4), Boston (4.8), New York City (2.1), Philadelphia (0.6), and Pittsburgh (-8.6). Fortune magazine named Raleigh-Cary the No. 1 Fastest Growing City in the South.
• Raleigh’s educational attainment is higher than its competitors – 47.8 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree or higher, based on the 2009 Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, compared to 44.7 percent in Boston, 43.9 in Austin, 34 in New York City, 32.6 in Pittsburgh and 23.2 in Philadelphia.
• The median household-to-cost-of-living ratio in Raleigh is $51,969 to 97 (out of the national average of 100), beaten only by Austin ($50,132 to 96.6). The others are Boston ($55,979 to 132.4), New York City ($50,033 to 182.5), Philadelphia ($37,045 to 124.8), and Pittsburgh ($37,461 to 91.6).
• Raleigh’s unemployment rate (7.7) hovers b etween that of the other cities: Philadelphia (8.5), New York City (8.4), Pittsburgh (7.4), Boston (7.1), and Austin (6.8).

  

Raleigh-Durham Real Estate

 

Real Estate Investors To Dominate Market The Next 2 Years

Real Estate Investors Expected To Dominate The Market

Real Estate Investors are expected to outnumber traditional home buyers three to one in the next two years, according to a national survey by Move Inc.

These investors also are ready to compete with traditional first-time home buyers to snag the best deals. About two-thirds of investors say they expect the problems that first-time buyers are having with financing and getting mortgages will work in their favor in competing for properties. One in five investors say they plan to purchase properties using cash-only and 80.5 percent expect cash discounts on properties from sellers.

Some additional findings from the Move Investor survey about this growing segment of home buyers are:

• 43.5 percent of investors expect it to get more difficult to find housing bargains in the coming months. Twenty-two percent expect prices to rise in the next six to 12 months, while 53 percent expect prices to stay relatively flat.
• Half of the real estate investors surveyed say they plan to hold their properties for five years or more. Only 11 percent expect to sell within 12 months of buying it.
• Nearly half of the investors surveyed expect a profit of 20 percent or more from their investment, 40 percent expect a profit of 10 percent, and 6.5 percent expect a 5 percent or less return on investment.
• Nearly half of investors say they plan to live in their investment property until it’s sold or turned into a rental property.
• About 56 percent of investors plan to turn their investments into rental properties. Also, the survey found that 28 percent plan to purchase a vacation property and 30 percent reported an interest in buying retirement property as an investment.
• Nearly 60 percent of investors say they’re new to real estate investing. About 33 percent are considering their first investment purchase and 8.5 percent are in the process of buying and selling their first investment property. Of those surveyed, only 36.5 percent had experience in more than one property transaction.

“This data suggests today’s climate is hot for investing and is attracting a lot of new people that don’t fit the stereotypical deal-driven flippers that buy and sell properties quickly,” says Steve Berkowitz, Move Inc. chief executive officer. “They’re mostly entrepreneurial individuals that will make vital contributions to local communities by investing their own money and sweat equity to improve and maintain properties. These personal sacrifices made over the long run will help improve housing stocks, home values, property tax bases, and thousands of local communities.”

Source: Real Estate Investors Outnumber Typical Homebuyers Three To One

Raleigh-Durham NC : Top U.S. Metro Area For IT Talent

The Raleigh-Durham metro area is one of the best environments in the nation for information technology companies to find and retain highly skilled workers, says a new report from KLG Advisors. According to KLG’s IT Market View report, Raleigh-Durham had the highest IT labor force concentration of any metro area in the United States.

KLG’s report spotlights U.S. metro areas that have the necessary ingredients to provide a skilled workforce for IT companies such as the current scale of IT talent pool, cost of IT talent, concentration of IT talent relative to the overall labor force, recent trends in IT talent pool growth and output of new IT talent from proximate colleges and universities.

While the North Carolina metro scored well in several categories, Raleigh-Durham scored “very strong” for having a high concentration of IT talent and for output of new IT talent from proximate colleges and universities.

In November, Newsweek magazine called North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham a “New Silicon Valley,” and said the area is “where the brains are headed.”

Raleigh-Durham Real Estate