Real Estate Report Offers Good News for New Orleans Metro
Wade Ragas, long known for his keen insights on the Greater New Orleans real estate market once again held his bi-annual seminar explaining his analysis of housing market trends both on the Northshore and the Southshore of New Orleans. His findings match much of the real estate news that has been reported both locally by nola.com and nationally by the National Association of Realtors. Home prices started to rise at the end of 2012 and in 2013, housing prices rose so much nationally in some markets that experts feared that the United States was headed for another housing bubble which would make growth unsustainable and once again, crash the housing market.
However, the real estate industry’s natural supply and demand finally stabilized the increase in home prices when standing inventory numbers finally decreased to normal pre-Recession levels and the unsustainable “buyer’s market” finally eased off of both builders and Realtors alike. In New Orleans metro, several neighborhoods have experienced unprecedented home sales, where several buyers at a time would get into a bidding war on homes in Uptown and the Garden District literally less than 24 hours after a home would be put on the market. In other sections of the city, sellers have experienced normal home sales time periods with better than average sales pricing.
Ragas’ report outlined home price percentage increases in several of these main neighborhoods and they are listed below:
New Orleans Lakefront, prices are up 5%, but metro-wide the average price increase was up by 4%.
Jefferson Parish, priced increased by 1%, but the West Bank, for the first time in almost 3 years showed a slow but steady increase in prices.
St. Tammany Parish, home prices were up by 2% with an average home price of $227,350, up from $212,250 pre-Katrina. Slidell, Louisiana, which has struggled to recover both after Katrina and other hurricanes also showed price growth in Eastern St. Tammany.
St. Bernard Parish saw prices go up by 6 percent. The average $129,260 price tag is above the pre-Katrina average of $116,120.
St. Charles Parish was the only community to see a dip in parish-wide average prices with a 2 percent drop. Half of the parish’s zip codes saw declines.
Prices were flat in St. John Parish after big growth last year. The average price was $141,500.
In Belle Chasse, Plaquemine Parish, prices were up 2 percent. A total of 34 houses sold at an average price of $312,800.
Even though the Greater New Orleans area did not experience as catastrophic economic collapse during the Recession, real estate and new home sales definitely took a dramatic turn for the worse during that time period. All of the price growth and sales growth locally have increased builder confidence and brought many real estate professionals back into the market.
