Data Points As of November 2016, the real estate market encompassing the east bank of Orleans Parish was “mildly active,” according to a market report from the New Orleans Real Estate Investors Association. The report, by Birdsong Realty Group, shows that: • The median price of a home sold in November was $387,000. • A home listed for sale stayed on the market for 42 days before being purchased. • Homes priced between $1.3 million and $1.4 million sold the quickest during the six-month period ending in November.
high-rise residential buildings, expands. The newest component in the complex of apartments, restaurants and retail offerings that covers a five-block area is the Standard. The 15-story residential tower now under construction will contain about 90 units, and will join two other residential buildings, the Paramount and the Beacon, completed earlier. Latter & Blum research shows that 12,097 New Orleans homes changed hands during the first three quarters of last year, up nearly 9 percent from the same period in 2015. The dollar volume of homes sold during the first nine months of ’16 topped $5.3 billion. However, Haas believes that, even as prices rise in
the coming year, actual sales activity could slow a bit, in part due to the impact of rising financing costs on first-time buyers. “I expect a gradual increase in mortgage rates,” Haas says, noting that current rates are about 2 percentage points below averages seen during the past three decades. “Is there room for rates to increase and have home-buying still be historically inexpensive? Yes,” he says. But Haas also points out that if rates rise from 3.5 percent to, say, 5 percent, it could test the limits of people who stretched their borrowing capacity to buy their current homes. “The effect of that would be to slow the move-up market and freeze some people in place,” he says. Meanwhile, real estate experts remain excited about the prospect of a major new development in the downtown area that has had difficulty getting off the ground. The remake of the aging World Trade Center building into a Four Seasons hotel and a number of floors of luxury private homes will be the largest downtown project undertaken in decades. A rival bidder on the project filed suit last year to stop Four Seasons from proceeding, and a state court judge recently threw that bidder’s case out of court. But new attorneys for the bidder have vowed to appeal the ruling, creating yet another delay. If the project ultimately goes forward, it will contain high-end condominiums with “concierge lifestyle” amenities not seen before in New Orleans. The prospective buyer, Haas says, is “someone who is at a point in life where they can well afford the luxury lifestyle that Four Seasons will provide.” n
myneworleans.com / JANUARY 2017
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