Houston Tops Forbes Ranking for Young Professionals Relocation

From Forbes.com via the Houston Business Journal:

Houston topped this year’s Forbes list of best cities where a recent college graduate can get a strong start on a high-powered career. The magazine placed the Bayou City at No. 1 for its “business-friendly environment and abundance of oil money,” considering it is home to 14 of the country’s largest companies. Only New York City, fourth on the list, had more big employers, according to Forbes.

Houston also had high average incomes and a concentration of graduates from elite colleges — and not just from local Rice University — but from across the country. Texas fared very well in the studdy, both Austin and Dallas also securing a spot in the Top 10 — Dallas at No. 6 and Austin rounding out the list at No. 10.

To come up with the list, Forbes looked at all of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas across the U.S., and then eliminated cities with fewer than 1 million people, and cities where Moody’s Economy.com predicts job growth will be negative over the next year. Next, each city was ranked based on its current unemployment rate, then criteria was factored in such as what people earn, the ability to stretch a dollar in the city and how many public companies called that city home. Then Forbes counted how many members of the Class of 2000 at Princeton University, Harvard University, Stanford University, Duke University, Rice University and Northwestern University were currently living in each city.

Cities rounding out the list included Washington D.C. at No. 2 followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul, Boston, Seattle, Denver and Atlanta.

Texas Wealth on the Move...But to Where?

This from Forbes.com (http://www.forbes.com/)

Where America's Money Is Moving
Written by Jon Bruner (edited here for length)

Low taxes, warm sunshine and deep discounts on real estate. No wonder IRS data shows the wealthiest among us are headed south. Surprise: America's wealthy like warm weather and low taxes. That's the takeaway from IRS data, analyzed by Forbes, on moves between counties. We looked for counties that the rich are moving to in big numbers.

The dominance of the list by Florida and Texas--the former has eight of the top 20 counties, the latter four-- makes sense to Robert Shrum, manager of state affairs at the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., since neither state has an income tax. "If you're a high-income earner, then that, from a tax perspective, is going to be a driving decider if you're going to move to one of those two states," Shrum says.

After accounting for property taxes, Shrum's analysis shows that Texas has the fourth-lowest personal tax burden in the country, and Florida has the eighth lowest. Shrum also points to eight states that have targeted wealthy households with extra-high tax brackets: California, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Hawaii, Oregon, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Six of the top 10 counties the rich are fleeing are located in those states.

Here are Texas' entries in the Top 20, which all happen to be in the San Antonio region:

No. 4: Llano County, Texas, North of San Antonio
Arriving average income per capita: $44,324
Departing average income per capita: $22,541
Stationary household average income per capita: $26,201
Total arriving people: 1,192
Total departing people: 1,018
Top origin: Burnet County, Texas (312 people)

No. 6: Bandera County, Texas, West of San Antonio
Arriving average income per capita: $37,849
Departing average income per capita: $18,092
Stationary household average income per capita: $24,536
Total arriving people: 1,396
Total departing people: 1,192
Top origin: Bexar County, Texas (458 people)

No. 8: Kendall County, Texas, Northwest of San Antonio
Arriving average income per capita: $51,713
Departing average income per capita: $29,013
Stationary household average income per capita: $41,590
Total arriving people: 2,987
Total departing people: 1,711
Top origin: Bexar County, Texas (1,131 people)

No. 20: Gillespie County, Texas, Northwest of San Antonio
Arriving average income per capita: $35,890
Departing average income per capita: $22,572
Stationary household average income per capita: $30,350
Total arriving people: 1,232
Total departing people: 893
Top origin: Kerr County, Texas (170 people)

Forbes Reports Houston Coming Out of Recession

Forbes magazine (http://www.forbes.com)Houston is 4th on the list of top US cities where the recession seems to be easing. Houston, along with nine other metropolitan areas, are best surviving the downturn in part because they specialize in industries that are relatively insulated from economic volatility, Forbes said.

If one state is a poster child for economic recovery, said Forbes, it’s Texas, which is home to four of the 10 cities on the list. Houston was tied with Minneapolis for fourth place. Meanwhile, Austin was tied for first place with Washington, D.C. while Dallas came in third and San Antonio ranked No. 7.

“There’s more to why Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston are faring well than just the state’s energy industry. The tech, government and education industries supplement the oil state’s riches,” Forbes said. “As for housing, cities in Texas didn’t see the same run-up in home prices and rampant speculation that led to the spectacular bubble burst elsewhere in the country.”

James P. Gaines, research economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, said, “We didn’t have excessive overbuilding, so we don’t have a big overhang of unsold new homes, and because Texas has among most affordable housing in the country, the demand sustained.” Like Austin and Dallas, Houston is expected to experience a three-year, 7.03 percent rise in jobs. But nowhere are jobs projected to grow more than in San Antonio, where four military bases should help drive its expected 8.32 percent increase.

Fort Bend County Makes Forbes List

New jobs and rising incomes put Fort Bend County at the top of a Forbes list of "Best Places to Get Ahead in 2010." (www.forbes.com)

Forbes looked at counties where the number of jobs had grown the most between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009. It also factored in the counties with the highest income growth. Fort Bend county income levels grew 10 percent between 2007 and 2008, including the addition of 5,913 new jobs since the second quarter of 2007. The county's median income was $84,782 in 2008, up from $77,082 in 2007.

Like the rest of Texas, Fort Bend gets a healthy chunk of its revenue from the energy sector, but it also benefits from a diversity of industries - including education and hospitality - that has fueled several decades of rapid population growth. Several companies on Forbes' 400 Best Big Companies list are headquartered there, including Texas Instruments, Baker Hughes and Thermo Fisher

Forbes limited its search to counties where the median household income was $75,000 per year or higher. Here are the rest of Forbes' picks:

Delaware County, Ohio
Kendall County, Ill.
Williamson County, Tenn.
Arlington County, Va.
Will County, Ill.
Douglas County, Colo.
Alexandria City, Va.
Loudoun County, Va.
Hanover County, Va.
Carver County, Minn.

Houston Mid-Range Ranking in Forbes "Best Bang for the Buck" Cities

This from the Forbes.com (www.forbes.com) website:

Houston, TX came in 68th in the USA "Best Bang for the Buck" ranking on Forbes.com. Here's the link to the list:

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/30/cities-affordable-cheap-lifestyle-real-estate-housing-foreclosures_chart.html

Dallas, TX was in 64th place, Austin came in at 45th, San Antonio at 39th, El Paso was 33rd, and metro McAllen topped the Texas cities at 7th.

Houston struggled in areas such as real estate taxes, travel commute time, and real estate vacancies. However, Houston was ranked 13th in the job forecast category.

Houston Named as #4 Best City for Retirees by Forbes Magazine

The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area ranks No. 4 on a new list by Forbes of America’s 40 “recession proof” retirement cities.

Forbes said it considered such factors as average income for seniors, current and expected home prices, job-growth predictions through 2014, the cost of living and median monthly housing cost.

The Houston area ranked 33rd for home price change predicted for 2009-2014, 21st for number of sunny days, 18th for income of residents 65 and older, 15th for median home price, 13th for median monthly housing cost and fourth for both cost of living and job growth predicted for 2009-2014.

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, Ga. took the top ranking and was followed by Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla.

Austin-Round Rock shared the No. 5 slot with St. Louis, Mo., while San Antonio came in at No. 10.

New York finished last among the 40 cities, with Milwaukee and Boston rounding out the bottom three.