Soggy New Orleans runs out of places to live

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Soggy New Orleans runs out of places to live

• Michael Giusti / bankrate.com

http//www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A
ID/20060113/BIZ03/601130323
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Housing Supply in the Big Easy

• Real estate markets across the United States are
  hot, cold or lukewarm. In hurricane-ravaged New
  Orleans it'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 schools 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., 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.

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Where New Orleans Flooded
http//homepage.ntlworld.com/c.mcmahon4/nola/maps.
htm
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Half of the Housing Uninhabitable

• While Hurricane Katrina destroyed or damaged
  entire neighborhoods throughout the metro area,
  many more were left standing and in relatively
  good shape.
• 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.
• 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 tend 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.

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Help on the Way?

• With so many residents fighting to get back to
  their jobs, family and lives, the city is just
  plain out of places to live.
• No help appears to on the way, either. With
  nowhere to live, the army of construction workers
  needed to rebuild the city also has nowhere to
  stay. Contractors from around the nation, trying
  to converge on the largest current construction
  project in the world, now are functionally locked
  out of the market.
• The shortage of workers has boosted labor prices
  for the laborers who have been able to find
  somewhere to live. Unskilled laborers are earning
  as much as 20 and 30 per hour, where they were
  making a third of that before the storm.
• Real estate investors are also affected. With a
  shortage of workers, there is nobody available to
  rapidly repair "fixer uppers," which makes
  quickly reselling properties nearly out of the
  question, Sterbcow says.

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The Economics
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Labor Market
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