What will the flood do to the housing market here?

Curious about this as well. I'm in the market for a new home and we were looking to make an offer in the next 30 days but now I'm concerned that home prices are going to rise with the amount of people needing places to live.

I'm high and dry in LP....$$$

If you are dry, your value increases significantly. If you got water, your value decreases likely. Not just because of the water, but because everyone now knows the safe places versus the potential hazards.

In areas hit by natural disaster.....the homes that were not impacted or not damaged see a temporary increase in value. Rents spike in the short term. 8-10 months later things return to normal. There will be a very robust home rennovation and repair business for the next year or so.


Edit: Also, vehicle sales will probably go up locally in the next month or so.

The market was crazy on the Northshore after Katrina. Within the first few months, prices shot up around $100K in some dry neighborhoods. Didn't take long for the market to correct itself though. For Katrina, my home was dry but the area my practice was in flooded severely, so I put my house up for sale right away at "normal" pricing,. I was going to move to Picayune and open a new practice. Buyer fell through, and I changed my mind and decided to ride it out. A month later prices went through the roof. I was so glad I hadn't sold for $100K less. Life returned to normal much quicker than I expected. My life would have been so different if I had followed through on those initial plans. The moral is that many people will be in a panic and make rash decisions. It's a situation that is hard to be prepared for if you haven't been through it before. In some areas the market will be devastated and may never return to normal levels (went through this in Chalmette after the 5 year flood cycle kicked off by May 3, 1978). In other areas, like parts of Slidell that stayed dry even through a test as severe as Katrina, prices will soon skyrocket (especially when the flood insurance money starts flowing in) as demand outweighs supply. After a year or so it will return back closer to normal levels.

It did in Cedar Rapids, but our flood was over 1B in damage. I think private property was 858MM, and public buildings more than that. Bad deal for me.

What is the estimate there for dollar amount of residential damage?

Rental property owners here got both CDBG monies, and LOST monies. CDBG will be tied to affordable housing. You'll get. The same if your state and local gvts are organized, and if there is a federal declaration.

State is the eligible recipient. They make a state action plan, and. Locals get monies from there. It takes time as FEMA comes in a does an audit, probably 5 years down the road. Both state and local could pay funds back.

I was pretty involved here. We developed business jump start out of federal monies, first in the nation business funding, and developed a rental property rehab program from federal monies as well.

So will rental houses get rehabbed? Depends on level of organization. Will bargain rentals become available? Yes. Will there be opportunity to flip? Our guidelines were the recipient needed to own for five years.

It was a long painful process, but if there are some organized rental property and business owners down there with some political connection, I'm happy to turn over what we developed.

I've been thinking about. You guys down there. Lots of good people on the outdoor board doing great work.

You might want to share this post on both outdoor and ot, and see if there are some people willing to organize, get aggressive, and get some. Recovery money directed where it might not otherwise be directed.

Flood cost me 700,000, and I got about 125,000 I would have never gotten as a landlord and business owner.

Only good thing that came out of it was the local election, and the business guys I met when we got organized. They actually had us meet the head of FEMA at that time, and I suspect some of the programs we developed can be copied.

A word of warning, if you lost your arse, and lack patience, this is going to be tough. We had shouting matches with elected guys regularly. It was tough, and I'd never want to go through it again.