US workers saddled by houses that won't sell

Soft real estate markets hurt worker mobility as relocation gets more costly – financially and emotionally.

from the April 2, 2007 edition

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He calls the current slump "unprecedented" and "nondiscriminatory," because it stretches across the country. Previous slumps were more regional, he says.

Some transferred homeowners are taking a wait-and-see approach by renting. Drew Marich, general manager of rent.com, notes that traffic on his apartment-rental site is up more than 20 percent from last year. He has rented out his own home near San Francisco and is renting a home in Los Angeles. A friend of his plans to sell his home in San Francisco and rent in Palo Alto, Calif., where he's taken a new job. His employer will subsidize the rent.

"It just doesn't seem like a good time to take a risky bet," Mr. Marich says.

Family concerns are No. 1

Despite these challenges, housing is not the top concern in a move. "The No. 1 reason employees turn down an opportunity to move is because of family," says Cris Collie, executive vice president of Worldwide ERC, an employee relocation council in Washington, D.C.

Sometimes family reasons also help to propel a move back. Two years ago, Jeff Sinatra moved from Boston to Detroit to start a new job with a financial services company. Assuming his family would be putting down long-term roots, he and his wife bought a suburban Colonial and settled in.

But before long Mr. Sinatra realized that all was not well with the job. "The owner misrepresented himself and the opportunity," he says. Most of the management team ended up leaving.

Now, as Sinatra considers his next career step, he and his wife want to return to Boston, where their families live. But because of massive layoffs in the auto industry in the past year, the Detroit housing market is flooded with "For Sale" signs. "We'll either rent our house or foreclose, because we can't sell it," Sinatra says.

He remains philosophical and optimistic, saying, "I've learned a lot of good lessons."

For Greenish and his family, their failed attempt to sell their house had a happy ending. They took their house off the market, and he was able to return to his former position at Conceive magazine.

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Click to enlarge SOURCE: WORLDWIDE ERC; PERCENTAGES DO NOT ADD TO 100 DUE TO MULTIPLE RESPONSES. SURVERY OF 160 COMPANIES THAT EXPECTED TO RELOCATE NEWLY HIRED EMPLOYEES/SCOTT WALLACE – STAFF