New Orleans, LA housing market

Homes in New Orleans are sitting. The typical listing is spending about eighty-two days on the market before it finds a buyer, and that slow pace is the real story this month. The typical home value has slipped about 4 percent over the past year, down to roughly two hundred sixty-six thousand dollars. Yet the median list price is sitting near three hundred nineteen thousand dollars, a gap of more than fifty thousand dollars between what sellers are asking and what homes are actually trading for. That gap explains the pace. There are about two thousand homes for sale right now, and only around four hundred new listings came on this month, so buyers have plenty to look through and no reason to rush. About 16 percent of listings have already taken a price cut. For sellers, the lesson is simple. Price to today's value, not last year's hope, or expect to sit and then cut. For buyers, time is on your side, and patience is leverage. Know your real number before you list, because this market punishes an optimistic asking price.