Moving in, out of metro Atlanta gets harder

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By Michelle E. Shaw

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In halcyon times when homes were sold within days of listing, executive promotions often came with mortgage assistance. Move-up buyers didn’t have to wrestle with banks to get a new mortgage. The residential real estate market was booming and prices were high.

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Industry experts say the region has been able to keep its mobility rate high because people are reconsidering all their real estate options.

AJC file photo Industry experts say the region has been able to keep its mobility rate high because people are reconsidering all their real estate options.

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That was no fairy tale. That was metro Atlanta just four or five years ago.

Few experts foresaw the housing market reality that faces metro Atlantans today. Current market conditions have left many stranded in homes they can't sell. But others have become creative about their real estate obligations.

For Ziyen Ng, the out-of-country job promotion he got was too good to pass up, even though he and his wife own a condo in Dunwoody. Corporate headhunters and other experts say the couple is among a growing group that refuses to view their home as a roadblock to job advancement if it means they have to move.

“What people do with their homes has become front and center in compensation package discussion,” said Scott Coleman, senior partner of Korn/Ferry International in Atlanta, a global executive search firm. “But people are also saying, they’ll take the job and figure out the house later.”

Ng said he and his wife didn’t want to sell their condo, but neither did they want to rent it to just anybody.

“In this market, we’d lose too much [to sell],” he said. “We did find CorporateHousingbyOwner.com and they will rent it and manage it for us and that works well for us.”

Nationally, the economy has caused many to reconsider career mobility. An Atlas Corporate Relocation Survey found in 2009 that 56 percent of responding companies reported employees turning down a chance to move, mostly among large and mid-size firms.

In the Atlanta area however, some industry experts say the region has been able to keep its mobility rate high because people are reconsidering all their real estate options.

“I don’t really see people turning down jobs,” said Brett Stevens, president of Atlanta-based SearchLogix, a job hunting firm for mid- to upper-level management. “I see people renting their homes for a couple of year or more and that works because people are looking for rentals right now.”

Stevens also said the local housing market isn’t keeping homeowners from looking for jobs outside Georgia.

“They’re not letting real estate hold them back, not for the right opportunity anyway,” he said.

There are few, if any, statistics on inter- and intrastate movement among homeowners, especially for employment purposes. Tracking that kind of information is difficult, said William H. Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Nationally however, "... interstate migration remains flat at a post World War II low, about half of its rate in the late 1990s," Frey wrote in Brookings article earlier this year.

Eric Wilson, who owns a home in DeKalb County, has been looking for a job for four months. He was laid off by AT&T in June and said he’d certainly consider a job out of state, if he got an offer.

“At this point, you’re just looking for work,” he said. “It’s really about getting a job, no matter where the job is.”

Wilson said he wouldn’t walk away from his home, but he wouldn’t turn down a job because of it.

“I’d probably rent it, but I wouldn’t just give it up,” he said. “I’ve worked too hard to keep it.”

Long-distance commuting and telecommuting are not new ideas but have become increasingly popular over the past two years. If a company is not flexible and demands a new employee relocate, the question becomes what is the company doing to help that employee, Coleman said.

There is evidence companies are becoming more helpful. A Worldwide ERC study found in 2009 that 17 percent of the companies surveyed said they increased assistance for transferred employees who lost money on the sale of their homes.

“Many times there is no answer, because we haven’t seen a corresponding corporate move to offer mortgage buy-down programs or mortgage assistance,” he said. “And companies are certainly not offering packages like the used to, because they’re not anxious to get into the real estate business.”