Flip This House

Real estate market still hot

$500 million in transactions in year

By Sylvia Schon

Daily Star Staff Writer

The desperation buying after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is over, but the real estate market in Tangipahoa Parish still sizzles.

More than $500 million in real estate transactions were recorded in 2006 for the parish and a small part of eastern Livingston Parish.

A total of 1,296 building permits for single-family homes for the rural areas were issued in the parish last year, more than double the year before and each of the years before that.

More than 7,000 single-family home lots are proposed for sale at present, according to Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess. He projects it will take five to seven years for all the lots to be developed and the homes built because there are just so many builders and so much material to go around.

And new permits are being sought all the time.

“We don't know how many new homes we will have in construction, but the permits are over 1,000. That would probably say our growth rate is better than 50 percent. That would be logical,” Burgess said. “�It's a good position to be in to have this growth, but the number one concern of the people in Tangipahoa Parish is growth. We need to address our infrastructure. The storm just kind of took us by surprise.”

Prices have leveled out a little since the spike right after the storm, but they are still higher than before, according to Pat Tucker of Century 21.

“Now we have more supply to meet the demand,” Tucker said. “Prices are still up, well up above what they were.”

So much so that investor Lee Collins of Hammond said she's not buying right now.