No, people are not flocking to Omaha to live near Warren Buffett-By Melody Hahm

“Most people who come to Omaha for the first time are shocked. They think they’ll be surrounded by farms and cows, but they actually find a very vibrant city,” says Andy Alloway, president of Nebraska Realty.

And Omaha is growing — logging a growth rate of 5.5%. The median age of the city’s population is 35.2, according to the Census Bureau. The age distribution has been “getting flatter,” says Skylar Olsen, senior economist at Zillow, and despite the large population of millennials, there’s an even larger group of baby boomers retiring there. About one-fifth (20.8%) of Omahans are between 20 and 34 whereas 26.6% are between 35 and 54.

Alloway says businesses like Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) and Union Pacific (UNP) have helped Omaha attract and retain young professionals. “Omaha is a great place to live and there’s a vibrant arts, food and culinary scene.” The city’s relative affordability is also a likely draw: the median price of a house in Omaha is $140,200, compared with $186,200 for U.S. median.

Olsen says home prices in the U.S. overall have appreciated 4.8% over the last year, while home values in Omaha have risen 8.3%, right back to pre-recession peak levels. (New York metro home values have gone up 1.8% and San Francisco’s have appreciated 11.5% over the past year). “This is a sign of a strong, healthy market,” she says. In addition to affordability, the employment picture is robust. High-paying jobs, particularly in the finance and insurance sectors, are attracting talent, she says.

The business management industry has experienced the most employment growth since 1990 — 611.4%. Fields like social assistance (which includes family, vocational and rehab services) and educational services have grown substantially –  439.5% and 162.4%, respectively, according to recent data from Zillow.

Alloway says he gives a lot of credit to Berkshire Hathaway and its famous CEO Warren Buffett for putting Omaha on the map. “They’ve added tremendous benefits to our community,” he says. “Buffett being a global business icon certainly has some residual effect on Omaha’s reputation.”

Is there a ‘Buffett effect’ in Omaha?
Some might like the idea that the Oracle of Omaha and Berkshire have some power in luring people. (Buffett has been living in the same home he bought in 1958 for $31,500.) But Buffett’s reputation alone isn’t quite a significant factor drawing homebuyers to the city.

Omaha-based real estate developer Arun Agarwal actually created an EB-5 regional center for Nebraska and Iowa because he saw huge opportunities for economic development in the midwest. The EB-5 program was created in 1990 to stimulate the U.S. economy through foreign investment. When Agarwal first started pitching Omaha real estate to Chinese real estate brokers and potential investors, he was met with blank stares and overall disinterest. But he had an epiphany last year when he was browsing a bookstore in the Shanghai airport; he noticed that 20% of the store’s books were Buffett or Berkshire-related. “The next time I got on the phone or met someone I started by saying Omaha is the home of Buffett. I got 10 meetings back-to-back after that,” he says. Agarwal says that actual investments have yet to follow that initial interest.

Though Berkshire is headquartered in Omaha and is a multinational conglomerate, the fact is Buffett and about 25 other employees oversee the company’s 62 subsidiaries that employ more than 340,000 people spread out all over the world.

In some indirect ways, however, Buffett and his family have impacted growth there, Agarwal says. In 2013, Buffett’s cousin Fred Buffett and his wife Pamela donated $323 million to build a cancer-treatment center, the University of Nebraska’s largest project ever. According to the university, the new center, set to open later this year or early 2017, will employ 1,200 people and the project will add 4,657 jobs to the metro area.

Omaha has a thriving job market and an unemployment rate of 3.5% (the national average is 5%), but is it enough to make the city a destination? Agarwal says that’s an aspiration, and not quite a reality.

“The conversations are absolutely happening around innovation. We’re increasing our talent pool and colleges are offering more IT and entrepreneurial management classes, but I’m not seeing any huge leaps or bounds,” he says.

Agarwal says a low unemployment rate is not always a good thing because it reduces the number of people looking for jobs. “It’s actually a negative for us. How are we supposed to find talent?” To combat this, Omaha is doubling down on vocational training, spending $90 million to expand its community college campus. It will take a lot more than Buffett’s name to recruit highly qualified workers, though. “Our biggest challenge is attracting talent. The main reason people move from one of the coasts is if they want to be closer to family or if a spouse needs to relocate,” he says.

Culled from Yahoo