With home prices on the decline, some managers who have accepted jobs in other locales appear more willing to commute long distances while they wait for the housing market to rebound so they can recoup their investment.
Executives were already increasingly open to the prospect of such “extreme commuting,” according to survey results released in November by Korn/Ferry International Inc., a Los Angeles-based executive recruitment firm with offices in New York City and Stamford.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines extreme commuting as those involving either a three-hour round trip, or those requiring weekly air travel between a home and job.
As of August, just 10 percent of those surveyed by Korn/Ferry cited housing costs as a deterrent to accepting a geographic transfer. Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that figure could be rising in inverse proportion to housing price declines. Julie Goldberg, managing director of Korn/Ferry”™s Stamford office, said at least four executives she has placed in the past several months have essentially been converted into extreme commuters due in large part to the real estate market doldrums.
“They are waiting for their houses to sell, and getting on a plane to go back and forth to their work,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg said she knows of at least a few residents in lower Manhattan whose 90-minute, one-way trek to jobs in Connecticut qualify them as extreme commuters.
Fairfield County towns are dotted with homes owned by managers and executives of global enterprises, many of whose promotion schedule includes being shuttled to far off places.
Other companies, meanwhile, are shuttling the offices themselves. Sound-system maker Harman Industries Inc. is relocating its headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Stamford, with some employees traveling between the cities until they find new homes here.
GE Money, meanwhile, last month revealed it is transferring its Stamford headquarters, including up to three dozen employees, to the United Kingdom. A GE Money spokesman declined to comment on how the General Electric Co. subsidiary”™s employees are handling the transfer during a down real estate market.
Two years ago, papermaker MeadWestvaco Inc. announced a headquarters move from Stamford to Richmond, and began shifting jobs to Virginia even before identifying a permanent office there. The company still maintains an office in Stamford.
“We applied flexibility in order to account for varying circumstances,” said Alison von Puschendorf, a MeadWestvaco spokeswoman. “Some of our executives benefit from being close to the financial center of New York City and therefore do commute as needed to Richmond from New York (and) Connecticut. The housing market has not been influential in this work structure.”
More than half of corporate recruiters surveyed by Korn/Ferry said it is more difficult today than in the past to get executives to take a transfer. Family ties were by far the leading reason, cited by half of recruiters surveyed, followed by lifestyle factors at 25 percent.
Xerox Corp.”™s reigning extreme commuter travels weekly between Fairfield County and Oregon, said a spokeswoman for the Norwalk-based company.
New York holds title to the longest average commute in the nation at 31 minutes, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, thanks to congestion caused by workers making their way into the city each day. Still, despite the string of epithets voiced daily on Interstate 95, the Merritt Parkway and I-84, Connecticut commutes have increased just 54 seconds on average over the past five years.
That is small consolation to those who encounter accidents that can stretch traffic miles in either direction ”“ but it is a decision driven by the economics of relocating closer to the job.
“The housing market in lower Fairfield County is tough, so there are a lot of people who will live further away,” Goldberg said.
