#4 Real Estate Barbara Corcoran: This is the best city for first-time home-buyers—and it’s not...

    Barbara Corcoran: This is the best city for first-time home-buyers—and it’s not NYC or LA

    The faster you buy your first home, the better, says real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran. As she tells CNBC Make It, "you've got to get in the game." That said, she recognizes that home prices are high and getting higher. That's partly why, if you can be flexible about location, she suggests you consider buying in a city that can give you bang for your buck: Nashville, Tennessee.

    By
    Robert Annenberg
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    The faster you buy your first home, the better, says real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran. As she tells CNBC Make It, “you’ve got to get in the game.”

    That said, she recognizes that home prices are high and getting higher. That’s partly why, if you can be flexible about location, she suggests you consider buying in a city that can give you bang for your buck: Nashville, Tennessee.

    That’s Corcoran’s top choice for young home-buyers. “Everybody seems to want to live in New York, L.A. or Washington … but you’re barking up the wrong tree because it’s so expensive,” she says.

    It’s places like Nashville “where you’re going to make the most money when you go to sell, five years, 10 years out,” she adds. There, “for $295,000, you can get a three-bedroom house. … Also, the prices have gone up almost 10 percent in the last nine months. That’s tremendous gain.”

    Amazon concurs: The company announced in November that it will build an east coast operations hub there and create 5,000 jobs, for which the average salary will be over $150,000 a year.

    Besides offering an affordable housing market, “there are more jobs in Nashville than any other small city in America,” says Corcoran. A 2018 Workforce Report from LinkedIn found that, over the past two years, hiring rates in Nashville have risen significantly: 11.2 percent. And Nashville ranked as the No. 3 city for attracting talent.

    “If you want to get high pay, make your way to Austin.”-Barbara Corcoran, real estate mogul

    The only other U.S. cities gaining more people are Austin and Denver, according to the report. Corcoran suggests first-time home-buyers also look there.

    Austin is going to be more expensive than Nashville in general, says Corcoran, but it “has a lot of high tech businesses — Dell and Apple are there — so if you want to get high pay, make your way to Austin.”

    Denver, meanwhile, “has so much more room for growth,” Corcoran says.

    At the end of the day, “If you’re watching your wallet and you want to make the most money in up and coming [cities], those, I think, are the three best cities right now to plunk you cash down.”

    Don’t miss: Real estate mogul Barbara Corcoran: Use this simple formula to figure out how much to spend on your first home

    This is the second article I’ve read that mentions Nashville, Tennessee! I’ve just read another paper that puts Nashville in one of the top 3 places to live in the country for affordability, entertainment, and age demographics. They say the average age in Nashville is in the 30’s. This was also true with Austin, Texas and Denver, Colorado. The bottom line is educated, intelligent young professionals need more than just a cheap place to live. They need a town that has great schools, high paying jobs, and of course good entertainment.

    What good is it moving out into the middle of nowhere if you’re making a huge amount of money but there’s nothing really to do other than go to the whorehouse twice a week, maybe fine dining is a truck stop sloppy Joe and for entertainment purposes the town has nothing but a few 25 cent peep shows? Believe me, these peep shows can be very inconvenient. For starters, they only take quarters. And they don’t allow kids so the kids are going to wait in the car! 

    In addition, people are also looking at weather, which is of course the main reason why people move to Florida: for the weather. Nashville’s a different story. Although, people living in Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, etc. Nashville can actually feel like a southern state to them! Nashville winters are not near as bad as New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc. Everything’s a trade off. And based on this article, Nashville has a lot going for it. Todd Chrisley from Chrisley Knows Best recently relocated to Nashville, Tennessee from Atlanta.  

    In fact, Nashville’s even on my radar for possible relocation. It’s a city that has a lot to offer. It’s basically centrally located to most major East Coast metropolises. There’s an up and coming tech crowd moving into this city as many tech companies chase talent once there is an established tech community. Nashville now has that. If anybody’s been to Nashville or knows much about it, let us know in the comments section. We’d love your input!

     

     

    About The Author

    Robert Annenberg
    Robert Annenberg
    Robert Louis Annenberg Is a 40 year seasoned property owner, manager, investor, builder/developer and business man who is also an author of five published books to date (Amazon.com) and the chief editor of LifeQuestJournal.com. He can be reached at: [email protected] and (201) 289-2500.