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Asheville, NC

Asheville business statistics
Employer establishments with 1-49 employees
(2007)
11,695 11,214
Small business growth rate
(2004-2007)
11% 5.0%
State business tax climate ranking
(out of 50 states)
39 N/A
Percentage of population with bachelor's degree
(ages 25-34)
25.1% 26.9%
Violent crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007)
282.5 478.8
Property crime
(rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2007)
2,874.8 3,562.2
Population growth
(2003-2008)
7% 5.73%
Per-capita income
(2007)
$32,408 $35,547
Per-capita income growth
(2002-2007)
23% 24.0%
GDP (in millions)
(2006)
$12,740 $18,559
GDP growth
(2001-2006)
33% 32%
Average hourly wage
(2008)
16.85 $18.69
Housing foreclosure rate
(first half of 2009)
1,147 286
Median rent
(2009, for a 2-bedroom housing unit)
$741 $848
Housing price-to-income (HPI) ratio
(first quarter of 2009)
3.0% 1.9%
Long-term HPI ratio
(20-year average, 1984-2004)
2.00% 1.82%
HPI deviation from long-term average
47% 0.0%

All statistics are for the full Metropolitan Statistical Area. For a complete list of data sources, see "How we picked the Best Places."

From the November 2009 issue
Best Places Winners
MAPS

BORROW

Local smallbiz lenders

  • BB&T Corporation
  • Superior Financial Group
  • Surrey Bancorp
  • American Heritage Holdings
  • Innovative Bank
See all local lenders

What do you think of Asheville?
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ireportTell us why: Low taxes? Talented workers? An active small business community? Send us your photos and videos, and you could be featured in our upcoming coverage of reader-picked Best Places to Launch. More
This year we partnered with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to find the 50 most business-friendly communities in America.

With help from Robert Fairlie, an economist and leading scholar of entrepreneurship at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we developed a methodology and sifted through such data on factors such as per capita income, hourly wages, workforce quality, crime rates, taxes and foreclosures. More

Comments? E-mail the editors
Data partners

This package was produced in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Foreclosure data provided by RealtyTrac.

Housing price-to-income data provided by Moody's Economy.com.