The Austin Sales Pitch

Susan Davenport with The Austin Chamber of Commerce (http://www.austin-chamber.org/) is a fabulous spokesperson, no wonder we are doing so well!

She's a wonderful speaker, both fascinating and inspiring with regards to Austin and its potential. She stood in a room of Keller Williams Realtors (60 to 80 I am guessing), impeccably dressed, gave a positive presentation, then was a very good listener towards the random questions from the audience. If there was a question Susan did not have the answer to, she was the first to state such. There was so much information from the meeting and I will highlight some of the parts.

The Chamber has a great web site, and if you want a 130 page power point presentation she provided, let me know and I can attempt to email it. Her presentation focuses on the 5 county region surrounding the city of Austin; Travis, Hays, Bastrop, Williamson, Caldwell Counties. These other counties outside of Travis (where Austin resides) do have their own Chamber, but I believe some of the growth and ‘’bragging’’ is mixed in with these 5 counties.

As stated above, Susan had a lot to highlight regarding Austin; population growth (estimated to be over 2 million by 2015), job growth (around 91,000 expected in the next 5 years), highest per capita income in Texas metros, 8 colleges/universities with 118,000 students (consider in addition the professors/T.A.’s, custodian staff, etc.), nearly 71% of the population is under 45 (vs. 64% nationally), 39% of the population over 25 has a bachelor’s degree (vs. 27% nationally). Our main inflow of new residents comes from other Texas cities, which most likely stems from graduates of University of Texas and the other 7 universities/colleges.

Being a ‘’native Austinite’’, there are many of us that won’t live with our spouses anywhere else so a warning to all non-Austin folks, don’t marry an Austinite! California, Chicago and Miami also represent a high count for new residents coming to Austin. I think the outflow of people represents patterns with Dell Computers since two of the top three locations, North Carolina & Tennessee are areas where Austin residents move to/away. Another city which attracts a lot of Austinites is Atlanta.

Susan also got into another section of her presentation regarding the power of Austin; a large number of private employers, a number of business which call Austin their HeadQuarters, the corporate significance in general in Austin, recent new/expanded operations. A major success story is Samsung, with their large deposit into Austin for their business. Susan explained part of the success in earning Samsungs investment in Austin, relates to the University of Texas systems dedication to sending delegates to meetings involving the Chamber and companies. She wanted to emphasize recognition in the importance of the delegates since these employers need the student work force, the research, the resources.

Towards the end of her presentation, after going through her power point with one awesome bit of information after another, I could tell what the questions were going to be - “ok, what is the negative? Tell me something to be worried about?”

At this point, the audience took over relating stories from clients (Buyers and Sellers plus Realtors) about the problems with traffic, education rates, cost of living. The airport also caught some heat about the number of or lack of non-stop flights and lack of international flights for an international airport.

Susan mentioned how closely The Chamber watches the unemployment rate especially when it dips below 4%, what they consider full employment for statistical purposes. Full employment makes for a tougher atmosphere in hiring workers for these corporate giants Austin wants to bring in. When a ‘’C’’ level executive considers moving his family across the country to a new opportunity in Austin, Austin has to have a variety of fall back jobs in case something goes wrong for this ‘’C’’ level executive, so variety is very important within an industry/profession. Susan and The Chamber want to increase the stability, so successful in the 80’s when banking/oil were so upside down. Since Austin is the Capital plus host to University of Texas, there is a strong stable base of federal and state jobs.

Utilize the web site, (http://www.austin-chamber.org/), go to Economic Indicator and enjoy.