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Default New Orleans real estate: a mushy gold rush

New Orleans real estate: a mushy gold rush
By Michael Giusti • Bankrate.com

Real estate markets across the U.S. are hot, cold or lukewarm. In
hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, the market's just a soggy mess.

Not that it's all bad. The market in the Crescent City has a new
golden rule: If your house didn't flood, has electricity and is in an
area with a viable school system, it's gold.

That new landscape has sparked something of a gold rush prompting
people to quickly buy up any reasonably priced house on the market,
says Arthur Sterbcow, CEO of Latter & Blum Inc./Realtors, one of the
region's largest real estate brokerages.

"We are in one of the most active markets I have ever experienced. It
is both the best and worst of times -- it just really depends on what
side of the (17th Street) canal you were sitting on when the levees
broke," he says.

The 17th Street Outfall Canal is a fortified, levee-encased drainage
canal that separates New Orleans from its biggest suburb, Jefferson
Parish.

The canal was built to carry rainwater from a massive pumping station
within the city out to Lake Pontchartrain, which borders the city to
the north.

During Hurricane Katrina, the storm surge flowed into the lake and
subsequently into the 17th Street canal, as well as two other similar
canals. That rush of water overwhelmed the flood protection, sparking
much of the now-famous flooding.

Although news footage following the hurricane showed a city almost
entirely under water, those pictures did not tell the whole story.

While Hurricane Katrina destroyed or damaged entire neighborhoods
throughout the metro area, many more were left standing and in
relatively good shape. According to Louisiana State University
economist Loren Scott, the storm rendered about 267,000 of the metro
area's 565,000 homes uninhabitable. As hordes of evacuees now make
their way back into the city, demand for a place to live is growing
every day.

High and dry
Independent levee systems run along each side of the 17th Street
Outfall Canal. Following the storm, the Jefferson Parish side remained
intact, sparing at least half of the metro area's homes from
storm-surge flooding.

But even on the New Orleans side, not all homes flooded. Several areas
of the centuries-old city were built on relatively high ground. Higher
areas tended to be the older, historic areas along the Mississippi
River that were built before modern technology allowed the swampland
that much of the city sits in to be reclaimed.

Those neighborhoods, such as historic Uptown New Orleans and the
Garden District, were generally high enough -- most were about 4 or 5
feet above sea level -- to be spared when the floodwaters rushed
through the streets.

This geography has left thousands of buyers all competing for the same
reduced pool of homes.

"We are just having a record-breaking year," Sterbcow says. "We were
already very active before the hurricane, but nothing like we are
seeing now."

Sterbcow says his company was founded in 1916, and the month after the
storm it had the best month of its history.


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http://www.bankrate.com/nltrack/news...20060110a1.asp

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