Hurricane Katrina caused a population surge in the Baton Rouge area 17 months ago. Just a day after the storm hit countless, homeless families were renting and buying anything and everything they could get their hands on - sight unseen. Within a matter of hours, homes that had been on the market for a day or for a year were gone with multiple offers. Phones were not working. Communication was difficult. It was a flat out madhouse in Baton Rouge. About six months later, there were still people purchasing property as a result of the storm. Some had waited until they could decide on making a permanent move to Baton Rouge from New Orleans. Others who had made panic purchases were putting their homes back on the market so they could fix up their New Orleans homes and move back. Today, our housing market values are still increased and there is a healthy supply of home buyers. Buyers have not quite adjusted themselves to the increased values and many of them feel the values are artificially inflated. However, time tells the real truth. Values did reduce slightly since the storm surge of sales. Values then started to rise again. And now the housing values in Baton Rouge are back to being driven by the natural flow of buyers and sellers. To expect some drastic reduction in values at this point is unrealistic. It is fair to expect prices to continue to rise as real estate in our area tends to do.
The panic is gone, but the destruction still lives on in New Orleans. If you are not in south Louisiana and have not seen anything on the news lately, you need to know that there is still, 17 months later, a totally destroyed piece of American Heritage and clean up and reconstruction has been slow at best. In fact, some of the outlying areas of New Orleans, like St. Bernarnd Parish were never really on the news. St. Bernard got it very bad. There are many homes in that area that cannot be rebuilt and are scheduled to be bulldozed. As a result there are possible investment opportunities throughout the Gulf region.
If you are an investor, discuss with your accountant the possibilities of using GoZone incentives to purchase properties in this area. You can help with the rebuilding of a great culture and gain financial and tax benefits at the same time. Now that's a Win/Win for everyone!
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