Saturday Stats: San Jose is the #11 Top City for Millennials to Live, Work, and Play

Niche Data has ranked the top 25 cities for millennials to reside based on a variety of factors such as crime rates, college graduate surveys, rent costs, and median income. As expected, both New York City and San Francisco ranked well with the #1 and #5 spots respectively. However, San Jose which is often perceived as a place to "graduate to" after you have a family also fared well in 11th place.

A big myth is also expelled, which is the percentage of young people in each of these regions (the assumption is that San Jose has fewer). Both San Jose and San Francisco have 15% of their population between ages 25-35, while New York is slightly less at 14%. Also while San Jose and New York have "low" crime rates, San Francisco is ranked as "average." Check out the source link for the full list of cities!

Source: Huff Post Collect, Hat tip to our friend Dan De La O

Saturday Stats: San Jose has the #3 Lowest Obesity Rate in US (For Large Cities)

We all know that obesity is a growing problem in the US, but the good news is that it is much less of a problem here than it is in other places. In a recent Gallup Well-Being survey, the San Jose area ranked as having the 3rd lowest obesity rate for any metro with a population of more than one million people. If you look at the largest 189 US Metros, we still fared quite well in 8th pace.

The most obese community in the US was Huntington-Ashland, where every two out of five people is considered obese. San Jose has half that rate with one one out of every five people being statistically obese.

Source: Gallup, Hatip to Filipe Medeiros

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the #8 Most Compact/Connected Large Metro in the US

San Jose gets a lot of flack for being sprawled out; however, based on two large scale studies of urban sprawl in the US it turns out we are not doing too shabby. In the Smart Growth America study, we were the 8th most compact and connect metro in the US with a population greater than 1 million people. In fact, we got higher index scores than Oakland and Chicago metros.

In another study entitled Urban Sprawl in the United States: 1970-2010, San Jose had a "sprawl score" of 21.04 in 1970, 16.5 in 1980, 16.33 in 1990, 15.25 in 2000, and 14.13 in 2010. Without really going into how the numbers were calculated, the conclusion is that sprawl decreased by a third over the past 40 years in San Jose. So the reality is that like LA, we are a lot more dense than the general perception.

Source: Smart Growth America, Hat tip to Russ Lopez fro sending this in!

Saturday Stats: San Jose Ranked #5 Best City for Overall Well-Being

Gallup has ranked the best and worst cities for "well-being" and San Jose did quite well. The data is based on more than 500,000 interviews where people were asked about their emotional and physical health, their job satisfactions, community safety, and access to food, shelter, and health care. In overall well-being, San Jose came in 5th while SF landed the 9th spot on the list.

The top 10 cities for overall well-being:

1. Provo-Orem, Utah
2. Boulder, Colo.
3. Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo.
4. Honolulu
5. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.
6. Ann Arbor, Mich.
7. Naples-Marco Island, Fla.
8. San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles, Calif.
9. San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Calif.
10. Lincoln, Neb.

Source: USA Today, Hat-tip to Barclay Livker for sending this in!

Saturday Stats: SAP Center Infographic

Check out the infographic below courtesy of Realtor.com that compares the SAP Center in San Jose to the average house in America.

Saturday Stats: #1 Apartment Boom Town

SpareFoot ranked the top apartment boom towns in the US, and San Jose took the pole position on the list with San Francisco coming in 8th. The analysis looked at the total apartments per person, population growth, the percentage of people spending more than 35% of their income on rent (lower numbers are better), per-capita personal income growth, per-capita GDP growth, and growth in per-capita construction permits for new apartments. The article is an interesting read (especially on how Detroit made the list) and you can access it here.

The Way to San Jose
Here is SpareFoot’s ranking of America’s Top 15 Apartment Boom Towns, in descending order.

1. San Jose, CA
2. Austin, TX
3. Houston, TX
4. Grand Rapids, MI
5. Nashville, TN
6. Dayton, OH
7. Portland, OR
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
10. Oklahoma City, OK
11. Seattle, WA
12. Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
13. San Antonio, TX
14. Des Moines, IA
15. Detroit, MI

San Jose’s continued job growth, along with its shortage of affordable entry-level homes, encourages younger workers to look for apartments, said Matthew Mahood, president and CEO of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“The apartment housing market has responded to this increased demand and has built and will continue to build new projects. In fact, there are two high-rise projects being built simultaneously in downtown San Jose that will provide for nearly 700 for-rent units in the next two years,” Mahood said.

Source: The SpareFoot Blog

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the #9 Best City for Female Entrepreneurs

Nerdwallet has crunched some data on female entrepreneurship and San Jose came in 9th place. They looked at the number of businesses per 100 residents, percentage of women-owned businesses, unemployment rate, education, and median earning for female full-time workers. I'm a bit surprised that we did not rank higher on the list and that the median income for women is so much lower than the Silicon Valley median. It is always nice to get into these national rankings, but this is something San Jose could improve upon.

Source: Nerdwallet

Saturday Stats: America's Super Cities (Best-Performing Metros 2014)

SpareFoot put together an infographic showing a list of US cities to watch in 2014. They relied on data from the Milken Institute as well as several media outlets. San Jose made the list! They even posted a great quote from Business Insider: "With a powerful ecosystem of startups established companies, universities, investors, and a deep talent pool, San Jose remains the most impressive tech neighborhood in the world."

Check out the full infographic over here.

Saturday Stats: San Jose Metro Ranked as #2 Top Performing Rental Market in the Country

We all know how expensive it already is to live in Silicon Valley today, but it looks like rents are continuing to climb. In 2013, the national average for apartment rent rose 5.1% to $1,093 per month. The list of metros across the country where rents appreciated the most was entirely dominated by the Bay Area. In fact, the region took the top 3 spots in the list, with San Jose coming in second:

• Santa Rosa Metro: 12.2% growth (average rent of $1,438)
• San Jose Metro: 10.1% growth (average rent of $2,153)
• San Francisco Metro: 9.8% growth (average rent of $2,044)

With the local economy and job market continuing to heat up and the demand for housing outpacing supply, we may see similar rent increases for 2014.

Source: SVBJ

Saturday Stats: San Jose Ranks #4 for Political Giving

The political campaign season has already begun despite there being over nine months left before the 2014 midterm elections. Nerdwallet has taken the campaign contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics and ranked the 50 largest US metropolitan areas in terms of political contributions. San Jose came in at #4. I have to say that I am a little bit surprised to see San Jose rank so high on the list, but am not surprised to see that 75% of party-specific contributions went towards the Democratic Party. Check out the full article and more analytics at the source link below.

Source: Nerdwallet

Saturday Stats: Car Ownership Highest in San Jose

This week's stat is kind of a two-parter. The Wall Street Journal posted an article stating that a larger share of US households do not own a car than in 2007. This is entirely true, but the change in American car ownership over those five years amounted to a measly half of a percentage point (0.5%). Some cities like San Diego, Austin, Ft. Worth, and Denver actually saw car ownership rise. San Jose takes the cake for the highest percentage of car ownership, with 94.2% of households owning a car. Over those five years, households with cars dropped in San Jose by 0.4%, close to the drop for the US Average.

Now part two is an article that bothers me by The Atlantic. They took the same data the Wall Street Journal used and asked the question, "why do the smartest cities have the smallest share of cars?" Let me remind everyone that San Jose was named the Smartest City in America by the TODAY Show a couple weeks ago, and we were at the very bottom of the data set for car ownership (lower means more households with cars in this case) along with cities like Austin and San Diego. Not only do I find this argument very weak, but the writer of this article completely corrupted his points by conveniently removing San Jose from his data set for "Cars and College" showing the correlation between education and car ownership (arguing that people with more education are less likely to own car). Check out the articles and lets us know what you think.

Sources: WSJ, The Atlantic, Hat tip to Tim Reed!

Saturday Stats: Santa Clara County has the 5th Largest Homeless Population in the US

Homelessness is one of the key issues our area is facing more and more each day. A federal survey has come out saying homelessness has declined overall, but Santa Clara County has the 5th largest homeless population in the US. This is not adjusted on a per capita basis (like the map below), but raw numbers.

Homeless Populations

• New York City: 64,060
• Los Angeles city and county: 53,798
• Seattle/King County: 9,106
• San Diego city and county: 8,879
• San Jose/Santa Clara County: 7,631

I am a little bit skeptical about the data given SF is not on the top 5, but Santa Clara County does have more than double the population of SF County. On a per capita basis I would expect Santa Clara County to be lower on the list.

The real bad news is that they are not mostly transients that are flocking to the South Bay for awesome weather and a liberal environment. 85% of the homeless here had their last permanent residency within the county. This isn't something that we can easily sweep under the rug, most of these people were former neighbors at one point.

Source: Anonymous Poster, The Merc

Saturday Stats: San Jose Metro is the #1 Area to Flip a House

Flipping a house involves buying a property, renovating it, and reselling it. It is a key measure of housing market activity. According to 24/7 Wall St., San Jose is killing it when it comes to flipping homes. In fact, they ranked the region as the #1 place in the county to flip a home. The average gross profit flippers nabbed in San Jose is $166,287. The average selling price of the renovated homes came in at $704,762... which is the highest among all areas in the study. Check out the full list of cities (metros actually) below.

TOP 10 BEST CITIES TO FLIP A HOUSE

1.) San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA
2.) San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA
3.) Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura, CA
4.) Ocean City, NJ
5.) Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA
6.) San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA
7.) Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA
8.) Salinas, CA
9.) Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA
10.) Vallejo-Fairfield, CA

Source: 24/7 Wall St., Hat-tip to Barclay Livker

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the #1 Richest City in America

You will have to hit the source link for the video, but San Jose was named the Richest City in America. There were some shots of Downtown both at the beginning and the end of the video. What do they attribute San Jose's success to? Tech, tech, and more tech.

The #2 wealthiest city was Washington, D.C., followed by Bridgeport, CT in 3rd. San Francisco came in 4th while Boston rounded out the top 5.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Bobby Guz Man from the San Jose Development Forum

Saturday Stats: San Jose Named One of 10 Cities That Could Run out of Water

Not all the Saturday Stats are positive. The Weather Channel highlighted 10 US cities that could run out of water, and calls San Jose "one of the most water-stressed areas anywhere in the U.S." We are at high risk of water shortages, especially on top of multi-year droughts like we had between 205 and 2007. Other cities that made the list include El Paso, Miami, Lincoln (Nebraska), Salt Lake City, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Las Vegas, and Atlanta.

Sources: The Weather Channel, Hat tip to Bel

Saturday Stats: San Jose is the Healthiest Housing Market in the US

According to Zillow, San Jose has the healthiest housing market in the country. Right behind us is San Francisco, followed by Los Angeles in 3rd place and San Diego in 4th. Sacramento came in 10th place, meaning five of the top 10 housing markets are currently in California.

This should help reduce the number of homeowners that are underwater with their mortgage and overall foreclosures, but continued housing appreciation will also make it more difficult for people to afford to live here.

Source: NBC News, Hat tip to Barclay Livker

Saturday Stats: 2013 META-Edition!

Every time I post a Saturday Stat, I also toss it in a Google Doc so we can look back on the year and see all of our top rankings listed in a single place. Since it is the last Saturday of 2013, the time to reflect is now.

The list is even longer than 2012. San Jose's achievements this year include #1 lowest housing vacancy, #1 in patent creation, #1 top job market, #1 happiest city for young professionals, #1 technical jobs per capita, #1 best city for STEM jobs, #1 best city to work in, #1 safest city above 500,000 residents, #1 richest city in America, and #1 happiest, healthiest city in the US. Pretty impressive, wouldn't you say?

Below you can find the full list of 2013 Saturday Stats, and if you want to check out 2012 the Google Doc is over here.

Saturday Stats: San Jose Ranks #4 Best Performing City in the US

Last year San Jose was Ranked as the #1 best performing city in the US by the Milken Institute. This primarily looks at growth of jobs, wages, and GDP (Gross Domestic Product, a good measure of what companies are actually producing and selling). For 2013, San Jose came in 4th place. Austin took #1, Provo was #2, and San Francisco was #3.

Just for fun I did a direct comparison on the stats between San Jose and San Francisco. 5-year and 1-year job growth was stronger in San Francisco, but 5-year and 1-year wages/salary growth was stronger in San Jose. High-tech GDP growth was slightly stronger in SF but San Jose took the cake in the entire study for total High-Tech GDP (it is double San Francisco's current Tech GDP).

Source: SVBJ, Best-Performing Cities

Saturday Stats: Homes Selling Fastest in San Jose

Home listings in San Jose have been on fire lately. 49% of October listings were in contract within two weeks (essentially the homes are sold barring any unforeseen circumstances). This compares to 41% in San Francisco. The average for all the metros that Redfin tracks is 28%.

Source: SocketSite

Saturday Stats: Santa Clara County Leading Bay Area Commercial Boom

There are a lot of cranes in the air and buzz about the office market in San Francisco, but the reality is that Santa Clara County is leading the Bay Area in commercial real estate construction with $2.1 billion worth of activity. While this beats San Francisco by 10%, keep in mind it is much cheaper to build offices in the South Bay than up North, so the variance by square footage is likely much greater. Also the $1.3 billion 49ers stadium is not factored into this figure. We'll also see how things go in 2014 and 2015 when developers start hitting the hard cap the city of San Francisco has set on new office construction.

In total, the entire Bay Area will top the $6 billion new commercial construction record set way back in the year 2000. It seems things are recovering nicely in our local economy.

2013 Commercial Construction Activity

Santa Clara County: $2.1 billion
San Francisco County: $1.9 billion
San Mateo County: $765 million
Alameda + Contra Costa Counties: $681 million

Source: SocketSite

Samsung's New US Headquarters in San Jose