SUNDAY, MAY 8, 2016
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NATION to downtown and high-end shopping centers, and rapidly filling up with young professionals. He paid $209,000. The bubble burst late in 2007, just as Hickman and his wife decided to separate. By the time Hickman and his wife divorced the next year, prices had fallen so much that Hickman estimated he would lose money if he sold the house. He sat tight. Meanwhile, a couple of miles south of Cotswold, another Charlotte couple was breaking up in the midst of the meltdown. Kelly Sercer and her husband had bought their house, an allbrick four-bedroom that backed up to a creek, at the height of the bubble. Now it was worth less than they owed, and they couldn’t afford to move out. So until they divorced, she lived upstairs and he lived in the basement. When they tried to sell the house again in 2010, no bids met their asking price. They rented the house and waited, with Sercer’s share in the home ultimately being bought out by her ex-husband. Sercer and Hickman became friends after his divorce. Eventually they started dating. In 2011, Hickman began a two-year, $220,000 remodeling of his house in Cotswold. But after Hickman and Sercer married in 2013, they realized something: The house didn’t fit the lifestyle they wanted, one that would hopefully include children. So in 2014, they sold it for $618,000. Hickman earned a $189,000 profit, a 44 percent return after accounting for the remodeling costs. Then they bought her old house from her ex-husband, for 9 percent less than Sercer and her thenhusband paid for it. Their house was also in an exclusive Zip code, but in a relatively less desirable corner of it. The Hickmans have no plans to sell their new home anytime soon. They recently gutted it and installed new floors, Italian marble countertops and a six-burner stove that cost more than either of their cars. “We overspent,” Kelly Hickman said earlier this year, smiling, but they’re betting it’s worth it: They’re watching young professionals begin to buy homes around them. This could be the next hot neighborhood. n
KLMNO WEEKLY
Graduates find a sunnier job landscape, with a few clouds BY D ANIELLE G ABRIEL
D OUGLAS-
J
ob prospects for college seniors about to graduate are looking up this year after an overall hiring boom, but lackluster wages and the burden of student debt might make new hires feel like they are still at a disadvantage. The nation has more job openings and higher demand for college graduates than in years past, and students are certainly motivated to work, especially if they are saddled with thousands of dollars — or tens of thousands of dollars — in school loans. Nearly 75 percent of employers surveyed by CareerBuilder, a job search engine, say they plan to hire graduates fresh out of college this year, the highest it has been in nearly a decade. “Most industries, outside of energy, are really doing quite well, and that makes the environment much more receptive than in times of higher unemployment or in times of recession,” said John Challenger, chief executive of consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “The market is generally strong, companies are filling their pipeline with new grads and they have strong recruiting programs out there.” Job vacancies are at near historic highs, hovering around 5.4 million at the end of February, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Openings are on the rise in educational services and the federal government, though positions in health care, finance and insurance have started to contract. “There are still pretty promising opportunities for the graduating Class of 2016,” said Nicole Smith, a research professor and chief economist at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “But they need to be concerned about their majors because the market is very picky about competencies,” she said, noting that employers “want students to demonstrate what they know above and beyond the
JULIA RENDLEMAN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
James Madison University students cross the quad between classes. The Class of 2016 is expected to have a somewhat easier time finding work after graduation, though student debt is still a burden for many.
credential they earned.” Many companies are favoring graduates with internships under their belts, she said. Researchers at the Georgetown center found that 63 percent of college graduates who completed a paid internship received a job offer, compared with 35 percent who never interned during their time in school. Those graduates with paid internships also scored an average starting salary of $52,000, 28 percent higher than their peers without internship experience. Colby Bender, 22, did not pursue internships as a student, pouring all of his free time at Virginia’s Radford University into student government and campus activism. The political science major figured that all of his trips to the state capital to advocate for students and his interactions with local politicians would impress potential employers. But of the 65 jobs for which he’s applied, just five have resulted in interviews, and none of those have proved fruitful. “While they say entry level, if you don’t have internships, they don’t end up choosing you. It’s frustrating because if it’s entry level, it’s entry level,” said Bender, who graduates May 7. “I’m looking for any possible job I can get. I’m
not too good for anything. I’m willing to do whatever I can to try and get some income.” Bender said many of the politicians and advocates with whom he’s worked are helping in his job search, but few local lawmakers are hiring, and the ones who are want students who have interned for them in the past. Though Bender is studying to take the LSAT in June and hopes to enter law school, he feels pressure to find work before he has to start repaying his $60,000 in student loans this fall. Looming loan repayments also are making Guadalupe Triana, 21, uneasy about her job prospects. Finishing up a semester abroad in Paris, she has perused a few listings, but wants to wait until she gets back to Lewis and Clark College in Portland to really dive into the search. Triana, who is majoring in rhetoric and media studies, said it’s hard not to worry about how she’s going to repay $30,000 in school loans. “Student debt got scary after I hit $20,000,” said Triana. “I just want to pay it off as quickly as possible. I won’t be able to do that with any job I get now, which is why I started thinking about the military. The military helps you pay back student loans.” n