For Austin property owners and real estate brokers facing rising vacancy rates, these companies can't come to town fast enough. The city's northwest submarket, the favored spot for tech companies, has hemorrhaged office space at an alarming rate in recent months. It accounts for more than 60% of the 2.9 million sf of vacant sublease space.

Atlanta, the San Francisco Bay area, including San Jose, and Dallas followed Austin in the survey. The cities were ranked according to the highest percentage of desirable attributes. The attributes were availability of skilled workers, quality of life, cost of living, access to research universities, quality of a transportation network, presence of "pillar" companies, strong local and regional government, state and local corporate tax policy and access to venture funds and other sources of capital.

Austin certainly has a pool of available tech workers. Companies have cut more than 15,000 jobs since January and the local unemployment rate reached 4.2% in June, almost a full percentage point increase from May, and job growth was just 1.7%.