Home sales up from September ’08

• By CHAD CALDER
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Oct 16, 2009 - Page: 6B

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

It took a year-old hurricane to do it, but Baton Rouge-area home sales topped year-before figures in September.

Realtors sold 615 homes last month compared with only 405 homes sold during September 2008, when the market was heavily affected by Hurricane Gustav and, to a lesser extent, Hurricane Ike.

Gustav hit Baton Rouge on Sept. 1, knocking out power and blocking streets with downed trees for weeks. Hurricane Ike hit a couple weeks later, though further to the west.

Realtors have sold 5,233 houses so far this year, 12 percent fewer than the 5,930 for the first nine months of 2008. The dollar volume of those sales is down 16 percent to $1.01 billion.

While housing sales have been falling short by double digits every month this year, the gap has been tightening a little, something local agents attribute to a federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers that ends at the end of November. There is an effort in Congress to extend the program and make it available to all homebuyers.

“We’ve seen a lot of first-time homebuyers out in the market, circling,” said Jan King of Re/Max Real Estate Group. “They’re definitely out there.”

King said the market has been running “hot and cold” and even some high-end houses are finding buyers.

“There’s still money out there,” she said.

King said people seem to be getting more confident about the economy.

The figures were released by the Greater Baton Rouge Board of Realtors’ Multiple Listings Service and represent about 80 percent of local home sales.

Taking a closer look at the numbers, agents sold 326 homes in East Baton Rouge Parish, 124 in Ascension Parish, 120 in Livingston Parish and 45 in West Baton Rouge, East and West Feliciana, Iberville and Pointe Coupee parishes, which are tracked as a group.

For the year, there have been 3,068 homes sold in East Baton Rouge, down 16 percent; 981 sold in Ascension, up 1 percent; 878 sold in Livingston, down 7 percent; and 306 in the remaining parishes, down 18 percent.

Dollar volume for the year has been $613.6 million in East Baton Rouge, down 21 percent; $204.0 million in Ascension, down 3 percent; $142.0 million in Livingston, down 11 percent; and $53.3 million in the remaining parishes, down 22 percent.