East Baton Rouge Parish, LA: September 2009 Residential Real Estate Market Update

By Don Stern

Real Estate Agent with Realty Executives South Louisiana

October 15, 2009 08:18 AM

East Baton Rouge Parish Real Estate Market Report

The data used in this report were extracted from the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors MLS database. The data are presumed accurate but are not warranted.

Sales of homes in the new construction and re-sale market segments are down a bit from the previous month but that is probably just the effect of seasonality that we historically observe.

Baton Rouge Real Estate - Monthly Unit Sales

Unit sales of homes in both market segments are expected to be lower in 2009 than in any of the previous five years.

Baton Rouge Real Estate - Annual Unit Sales

The average selling price is down slightly in both market segments but that is due to a shift toward more affordable homes.

We can see that the average price per square foot of living area is up slightly in both market segments indicating that home values have not diminished and owner equity has remained relatively constant.

Baton Rouge Real Estate - Selling $/sq.ft.

The next two charts examine absorption rates for new construction and for the re-sale market segments. We can see that overall, new construction has a 5.4 month supply of inventory given the year to date average absorption rate. The re-sale market segment has a 5.5 month supply. Segmenting this information further by price range, we can see that with respect to new construction, it is a seller's market for all price ranges below $350K. (Below $100K a 54 month supply shows. This I believe, is anomolous because homes in this price range just came onto the market and weren't available for most of the year leading to the low absorption rate of 0.1 homes/month.) The supply of homes priced over $350K exceeds the demand. In these price ranges there is about a years supply. While there is over 10-months supply of new homes priced over $400K, at 6 homes sold per month more than 15% of homes sold in the parish are in this price range.

Baton Rouge Real Estate - New Construction Absorption

In the re-sale market segment, nearly 80% of all homes sold in the parish are priced below $250K. The highest velocity of home sales is for homes priced between $151K and $200K. Over 17-months supply exists for homes priced over $400K.