The New Orleans Metropolitan Association of REALTORS (NOMAR) agrees that the housing market is still going strong but is fizzing down a little. The high-interest rates and the rise in insurance costs have set buyers back on the home-buying process.
“People are buying houses every day. While interest and insurance rates impede our process a little bit, people are still purchasing, albeit at an altered price point. I had buyers who were looking at homes up to $1 million and when they didn’t get the interest rate they wanted, they decided to use cash and changed their price point. They ended up buying a house right at $700,000. There are shifts in the market, but I still see closings all the time,” says Liz Tardo, President of NOMAR.
Agents and builders are finding different ways to entice potential buyers to buy. A great example is many agents and builders are offering roofing credits at closing. This means that the sellers pay for the roof repairs or a roof replacement at closing. Others are finding ways to keep inventory moving by using cash transactions or owner financing.
“This is an ability to sell an investment property, and rather than pay the tax immediately, you can take the tax liability and roll it into another property. If you have a property you bought 20 years ago and it’s not what you want any more, you could sell that and roll the money into a new property rather than paying a capital gains tax. This keeps the real estate market robust. You have someone buying another piece of property, which employs a Realtor, title attorney, lender, insurance agent, and perhaps others. It stimulates the economy in that way,”
Technology also plays a big part in the creative aspect as well so everyone in the industry has to stay up to date with any new platforms and research tools. “When you know more about people’s commutes, where they buy, and how much time they spend in a place, you as an investor can be smarter with site selection. Real estate is a big investment, so the more tools that you can have in your toolbox from a technology standpoint, the better off you’ll be,” explains Mignon Diaz with NAI Latter & Blum.
” What we find is that customers want both. They want to be able to come in and deal with a real person, but they also want service 24 hours a day from anywhere. We offer all of those things. We’re building new branches so people can go into a physical facility, but we also have all of the best electronic features,” boasts Guy Williams, president of Gulf Coast Bank and Trust Company.
