A Look at Best Cities
For Relocating Families

When Ray DeArmitt and his family moved last year to Austin, Texas, from Alpharetta, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, they didn't know that Austin outranked all the other big U.S. metro areas in a survey of the best cities for relocating families. They knew the place offered good schools and affordable housing, but most importantly, they felt it had a good vibe.

"Your instincts about a place have a lot to do with how you're going to like it. And when we visited for five days, we had really good feelings about it," says Mr. DeArmitt, who moved to Austin for a new job as vice president of sales and marketing for M. Transaction Services, a unit of Misys plc that handles health-care information technology.

Although Mr. DeArmitt says the move wasn't easy because the family had many good friends in Georgia, they're already feeling at home in Texas after less than a year.

While it's difficult to predict how well a family will adjust to life in a new place, the best-cities survey, published by the Employee Relocation Council (ERC) and Primacy Relocation, identifies quality-of-life elements that makes a locale easy or difficult for newcomers.

After all, a family new to a location will face different issues from one moving "where your grandparents grew up and you have a lot of connections," says Gary Bridgman, public-relations director at Inferno, a Memphis advertising agency that created the survey. Primacy, a third-party relocation company, and ERC executives say the survey provides valuable information for new hires as well as transferees.

"It's an effort to help transferees identify the areas where they might be interested in looking for a job; if they're already moving, it brings up the factors they might consider about the place they're going to," says Cris Collie, executive vice president of ERC, which is based in Washington, D.C.

To find out what matters most to newcomers, Mr. Bridgman asked relocation agents and ERC members to rank in order of importance criteria such as property-crime rates, extreme temperatures and pupil-teacher ratios. The agents were asked to specifically consider the importance of these factors in a family's first year in a new place.

Financial issues, such as the local college's requirements for in-state tuition, often outrank other quality-of-life concerns for some families, especially in the first year, says Mr. Bridgman. After all, a transferred employee's spouse or other family member may be quitting a job due to the move and hoping to attend classes in the new city. Since some new residents don't qualify for in-state tuition at local colleges for the first two or three years, they might have to delay their plans due to unexpectedly high tuition bills.

Other highly ranked criteria include economic factors like income taxes, home prices and home appreciation as well as hassle factors like the average commute time, downtown traffic congestion and taxes on vehicles. For example, in some states drivers pay up to $850 for new license plates and local taxes on luxury vehicles, says Mr. Bridgman. "These are the things that can really sting you," he says.

Financial factors have an especially large impact on lower-level employees. "If they are moving to a city where there's a high cost of housing and a high cost of living, a lower-level employee won't be able to afford the best lifestyle and will probably have to live in the outskirts. That can make it really hard," says Lina Paskevicius, consulting manager for Cendant Mobility, an international-relocation-services company.

The survey also found that a concentrated urban core and friendliness can be extremely important for newly transferred families. Says Mr. Bridgman, "Ninety-five percent of transferees report experiencing 'transitional shyness' and relocation people tell us that the other 5% are lying."

Since cities with strong social fabrics and active downtowns can help newcomers feel involved in their new surroundings, cities with concentrated urban cores received higher rankings than those with a lot of sprawl or that empty out at night.

Austin's active center, which helped the city get its high ranking, eased the DeArmitt family's adjustment in its first few months. "People are very active in the downtown area. There's always a festival or something going on. It's college-driven, and it's very positive and exciting," says Mr. DeArmitt.

The upbeat atmosphere also made it easy to meet people. "You go out to dinner and people are open, friendly. They ask you where you're from," he says.

Mr. Bridgman says rates of volunteerism are another measure of how friendly and helpful folks in a certain city might be. "For many people, the best, fastest way to make new friends is to volunteer your time. They can move around from organization to organization if they want, and they end up meeting a lot of people," he says.

But although the ranking gauges certain material factors, relocation experts say that transferees' personal preferences and attitudes have a lot to do with whether a move goes smoothly. Families used to warm Southern climates may be traumatized by the snow and cold of a New England winter. And families used to living in a small town may find the pace of a big city overwhelming.

"They come to a new city, don't know where to live, have five days to find a house and that's hard for people," says Ms. Paskevicius. "And sometimes a place that seems like a great place to visit isn't the right place to live."

An electrical engineer who was recently transferred from Yukon, Okla., near Oklahoma City, to Longmont, Colo., found that Longmont's small-town atmosphere helped him adjust fairly quickly. "It's easy to feel comfortable here, there is lots of wide-open space, it's easy to get to places. It's not urban, it's more country with horses and cows, and that's more what I liked," he says.

The engineer also says that the physical beauty and range of activities of his new hometown continue to outweigh its negatives, which include a significantly higher cost of housing and cost of living. "I now go hiking every weekend. That was something I never did before, but I really like it," he says.

Surveys show transferees are increasingly selective about where they will move. Studies such as the best-city rankings will become more important tools for employees and employers, says Matt Spinolo, president and CEO of Primacy, which is based in Memphis, Tenn.

"There can be some hesitancy for people to move to certain areas, because of high costs of living or a high cost of housing, for example. But this survey gives them a richness of detail in terms of what else is there," says Mr. Spinolo. For instance, it might show that a robust demand for employees and a strong cultural scene will offset a higher cost of living.

Primacy plans a city ranking for relocating singles later this year, in which school ratings and other family issues won't count as much. "We will be considering things like the average cost of a beer," he says.

-- Ms. Lisle is a free-lance writer in Los Angeles.

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