Maybe more people would move if they knew the best job markets? From the wsj.com:
The two hottest U.S. job markets in 2019 were growing Southern state capitals with vibrant music scenes and an influx of technology jobs.
Austin, Texas, topped the list for the second consecutive year, according to a Wall Street Journal ranking of new data collected by Moody’s Analytics. Nashville, Tenn., jumped to the No. 2 spot from seventh. Both cities anchor metropolitan areas of around two million people. The Journal worked with Moody’s Analytics to assess the labor market in 381 metro areas. Each region was ranked on five metrics: the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate, job growth, labor-force growth and wage growth.
Austin—a tech hub and college town—remains attractive to workers thanks to low unemployment and high wage growth. Nashville has low unemployment and high labor-force growth.
Apple Inc. is among companies bringing jobs to Austin. In 2019, it started construction of a $1 billion corporate campus with a capacity for up to 15,000 employees. It already has 7,000 workers in Austin. Amazon is building a campus in downtown Nashville with the goal of hiring 5,000 people, adding to the city’s growth spurt in recent years.
Denver moved up in the ranks to third place from ninth. Seattle and San Francisco also moved up to round out the top five large metropolitan areas.
Among smaller metropolitan areas, Boulder, Colo., beat out Midland, Texas, for the top of the list. Two other Colorado areas—Greeley and Fort Collins—made the top 10.
The 4.7% increase year-over-year only looks that impressive because of the 6-month decline we experienced at the end of 2018. The index has been flat since July.
Here’s is a good example of how fuzzy the pricing can get in any one era.
This house was on the market for a couple of months before it sold, and the week it went pending, there was a second house nearby that had tried to sell for all on 2019 with no luck. They cancelled right before Christmas while listed for $940,000, and then came back on for the same price on January 21st and sold the first day for $950,000.
This had been listed for $964,000, and closed for $935,000:
Compass agents and our clients are insured against this type of loss. Hat tip to Mitch for sending this in!
CARLSBAD, Calif. — The American dream turned into a nightmare for a young San Diego couple after losing nearly $800,000 in an escrow scam.
Kevin Noar, a chef, and Nicole, a UC San Diego nurse, were prepared to put down their life savings on their dream house in Carlsbad, only to fall victim to a sophisticated wire-transfer scam.
“It’s everything that we have,” Nicole said. “It is everything that we have and it’s just gone. It still doesn’t even feel real to me.”
“It is a nightmare, a total nightmare,” said Kevin.
Earlier this week, they received an authentic-appearing email with detailed instructions to wire their funds into escrow.
“It all matched up with everything we had received, so we proceeded with everything,” Nicole said.
They transferred the money as instructed: $774, 631.
It wasn’t until days later that they realized something was terribly wrong, when they reached out to the escrow company to ask about a slight discrepancy in numbers.
“And then they kind of realized, hey wait a minute… you wired money? When did you wire it?” said Nicole.
The couple quickly contacted the FBI, which they say has been able to track the nearly $800,000 from California to Texas now to Singapore.
“They said most likely, It’s just been disbursed, it is gone.. it is untraceable,” she added.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the couple recover some of the money lost.
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