Word: marriott
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...When the Marriott Corp. offered Robert Souers, 38, a job last summer, he talked salary and benefits for a few moments and then popped the big question: "What about relocation? Let's not continue to talk if there isn't a good relocation plan." Marriott was facing a problem that increasingly worries corporations throughout U.S. business: employees are reluctant to move because of the stratospheric cost of housing and mortgages...
Souers had an attractive 8¾% mortgage on a four-bedroom colonial house in River Edge, N.J., that had cost him $68,000 in 1977. He was working in New York City for the Sperry Corp., but Marriott wanted him to move to its corporate headquarters in Bethesda, Md., outside Washington. Says Souers: "I wanted to be sure that my pay increase was not completely eroded by the high housing costs and the expense of living in the Washington area...
...Marriott, though, was prepared for the problem. In addition to the salary increase, it offered to buy Souers' New Jersey house for a price determined by averaging two independent appraisals, to pay up to a five-percentage-point difference between his old mortgage and a new one, to pick up all the closing costs connected with the sale of the two properties and to pay for two house-hunting trips...
Souers and his family are now settled in a five-bedroom colonial house that cost $153,000 and has a 13.5% mortgage. Says he: "If Marriott had not offered the generous relocation benefits, I would not have moved. It would have meant either decreasing my quality of housing or decreasing my life-style...
...automaker's strategy has set off daydreaming by other corporate homeowners. Says Clifford Ehrlich, senior vice president of Marriott, which has an inventory of 76 unsold homes: "We could offer home buyers a free week in Santa Barbara at a Marriott Hotel." Executives at AMF, which even owns an employee's former home on Mount St. Helens, toyed with the idea of offering its Trac 14 catamarans or AMF-made snowblowers to anyone who would buy one of its 60 homes...