HOUSINGNEWSREPORT
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Millennials are choosing to live in Orleans Parish, mostly in the city’s crescent, in neighborhoods like Uptown, the Warehouse District, Bywater and the Faubourg Marigny.”
Wade R. Ragas Housing Analyst of Real Property Associates Inc. New Orleans, Louisiana
“It’s a very unique time,” said Haase, whose company represents six different condo developers. “It’s cheaper to own on a cash basis. Today, median-priced rentals are more expensive than homes to buy.” Several condo and apartment developments are underway in the CBD. The shuttered 17-story Jung Hotel — located on Canal Street — is being converted into a mixed use development, featuring 175 apartments, 145 hotel rooms and 50,000 square feet of retail and event space. The Paramount , an upscale apartment complex at the South Market District in the CBD, features 209 apartments, with rents ranging from $1,400 for a one-bedroom to $2,100 for a two-bedroom. Another South Market District apartment complex, The Beacon , features 124 apartments that rent for $1,700 per month for a one-bedroom,
$2,300 for a two-bedroom and $6,500 for a penthouse.
increasingly populated by full-time urban residents and tourists. Some two dozen developments are underway, many of them mixed-use projects and redevelopment of historic buildings into hotels. Consider the CBD: The 14-story Oil and Gas Building, vacant for nearly a decade, is being converted into a 182-room upscale Hilton Canopy hotel. Across the street, a 108-room Moxy hotel by Marriott opened in April, according to The Advocate . A block away, on Union and Baronne Streets, the former New Orleans Public Service Inc. (NOPSI) building will become a 210-room luxury hotel. Nearby, the historic Pythian building — formerly a hiring office for famed World War II boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins (maker of the flat-bed D-Day Higgins Landing Craft) — will be converted into a mixed-use development of retail, office and nearly 70 apartments.
Wade R. Ragas, a real estate market analyst at Real Property Associates Inc ., who crunches real estate data twice yearly for the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors and the Gulf South Real Estate Information Network, said New Orleans housing prices are rising because the number of homes on the market in the Garden District, Uptown and the Carrolton areas hit seven-year lows, fueling bidding wars and increased competition among buyers. Ragas said the substantial in- migration of millennials post-Katrina and high-tech job growth are driving demand. “Millennials are choosing to live in Orleans Parish, mostly in the city’s crescent, in neighborhoods like Uptown, the Warehouse District, Bywater, the Faubourg Marigny
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