[StBernard] In New Orleans Suburb, Ruined Homes Create A Surreal Housing Market

[Westley Annis]

>From the Los Angeles Times 


After Katrina, Few Buyers 

In New Orleans Suburb, Ruined Homes Create A Surreal Housing Market 

By RICHARD FAUSSET
Los Angeles Times

June 11 2006

CHALMETTE, La. -- Leaning in the doorway of a modest brick cottage, Arden
Kilgore was the picture of a perfectly put-together real estate agent, with
a lime-colored linen suit, off-white heels that matched her pearls, and hair
just so.

"Well, it's a cute little family dwelling, isn't it?" she said, as her
client poked around the interior.

It was one of those typically chipper comments real estate agents make when
showing a house. But Kilgore uttered it with a sardonic touch that
acknowledged the realities of the post-Katrina landscape in Chalmette.

The house in question, like most every other house in St. Bernard Parish,
had been ruined by the hurricane's floodwaters, its insides stripped to the
studs by its owners. The backyard was littered with debris from an
obliterated storage shed.

A spray-painted message remained on the front door, declaring, "DO NOT CLEAR
ATTIC CONTENTS."

Like many neighborhoods in the suburban stretches east of New Orleans, this
one was a virtual dead zone, with block after block of boarded-up homes,
browning yards and heaped piles of molding personal effects.

Yet Kilgore is still showing properties in Chalmette in one of the most
unpredictable and surreal housing markets in recent American history.

In St. Bernard Parish, the storm and subsequent flooding damaged or
destroyed nearly all of the 26,000 single-family homes. Almost nine months
later, the fate of its working-class and middle-class neighborhoods remains
clouded.

Since the storm, residents eager to return have helped fuel a booming
housing market in the unflooded sections of New Orleans.

But, rather predictably, sales in St. Bernard Parish have been slow.
According to the Gulf South Real Estate Information Network, real estate
agents sold only eight single-family homes in the parish in the first seven
months after Katrina.

Kilgore, by her calculations, says the number of sales is about twice that,
but still a fraction of the pre-Katrina market. "It's still pathetic," she
says.

The average selling price for a house in the Multiple Listings Service has
dropped to $59,500, from $111,500 before the storm. But prices are all over
the map because Katrina washed away so many of the tangible aspects of
community - the schools, shopping centers and neighbors that lend a house
its value.

Today, working in St. Bernard Parish involves traversing a landscape that
many of Kilgore's former clients have been forced to abandon. She recognizes
houses she once sold, and wonders what became of their owners - from young
couples just starting out to retirees who said this would be the last house
they would ever own.

Like all successful real estate agents, Kilgore is skilled at seeing the
possibilities in a room, a house, a neighborhood. But now she is painting
just as many pictures of what used to be, and for an audience that is mostly
in it for the money. Since the flood, the only people interested in buying
in St. Bernard Parish have been investors looking for bargains amid the
chaos.

"You're not showing to families anymore, which I miss," she said. "You know
you're not going to have that fun closing where you put the keys in people's
hands. Now it's business. It's cold. There's no emotion anymore."

On a recent Wednesday, Kilgore drove to the Home Depot in Chalmette to pick
up Robin Fraser-Orr, a former antique dealer. Fraser-Orr, along with an
investment partner, was looking to buy a house to fix up and flip.

"It's not only to turn a profit," said Fraser-Orr, a 15-year resident of New
Orleans. "People are going to need housing here."

Officials say that kind of interest is crucial to reviving the St. Bernard
Parish that existed pre-Katrina: a string of proudly salty suburbs, home to
the fishermen and builders and truck drivers who did the heavy lifting of an
industrial metropolis that tourists largely don't see.

Before Katrina, Kilgore said, the homes they were about to tour would have
ranged from $150,000 to about $400,000. She handed Fraser-Orr a handwritten
list of homes that had sold recently. The cheapest was about $21,000, the
most expensive about $150,000.


Kilgore, 46, and her husband have not decided what to do with their own
four-bedroom house here. It was inundated with 14 feet of water; the couple
have since moved to higher ground on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.
The flood also destroyed her company's St. Bernard branch office, where she
shared space with about 50 other full-time agents.

Kilgore is not a Louisiana native - she was born in Pennsylvania - and when
she moved to the parish 17 years ago, it was difficult for her to crack its
insular culture.

But over time, she made good friends and developed a humming business. She
learned to decipher the locals' intense, Brooklyn-like accent, and she found
that their working-class trappings often belied individual wealth that they
were eager to invest in the local real estate market.

She profited from the fact that many of them would never think of leaving
the modest neighborhoods and oil refineries of "da parish."

"I was still a Yankee, but everybody was really friendly," Kilgore said. "It
was its own little world. A nice, good little world, but a different little
world. St. Bernard was like the Mayberry of New Orleans. We never locked our
doors, ever."

Over the course of their day together, Kilgore gave Fraser-Orr an unsparing
account of the looming troubles St. Bernard Parish faced as it inched toward
recovery.

St. Bernard's big employers, two major oil refineries and a sugar plant,
have reopened, but many other businesses moved or remained closed.

She didn't have to tell Fraser-Orr about the lingering safety concerns -
they are the kind shared by nearly every south Louisiana resident. In St.
Bernard, the levee system is being restored, and the U.S. Senate has
approved the development of a plan to close the Mississippi River Gulf
Outlet, the artificial shipping channel some blame for delivering the
destructive storm surge that wiped out the parish.

But with warming waters and depleted coastal marshland, many doubt whether
those changes would be enough.

About 19,000 people have returned to St. Bernard. But the absence of the
other 48,000 residents was palpable on nearly every street. Still,
Fraser-Orr was heartened to hear that 2,300 students were back in the public
schools.

That optimism was tested within seconds, when the route to the first
property on their list was blocked by a house that had drifted off its
foundation and into the middle of the street.

Kilgore started maneuvering the Honda around it, but the investor stopped
her abruptly.

"No, no, this is way too much," Fraser-Orr said. "It's got to be in an area
that people can move straight into."

They drove back east, to Chalmette, and the little brick cottage.

"This is called Buccaneer South," Kilgore said. "Before the storm, it was a
very nice subdivision."

Fraser-Orr got out and looked the house over. The roof seemed OK. He paused
near a rain-soaked pile of business files and a faded picture of what looked
like a mother and child.

"God, this has got to be heartbreaking," he said.

Inside, the uncovered studs offered only intimations of the floor plan. They
couldn't decide whether it was a three- or four-bedroom cottage.

The sellers were asking $54,500. Fraser-Orr figured it was worth less than
half that.

The next house was also in Chalmette, on a street named Pirate Drive. It was
a brick four-bedroom with a collapsed aboveground pool and a bashed-up
storage shed tilting against a backyard fence. They called the owner and
former occupant, Becky Cieutat, who drove over and met them. Fraser-Orr
didn't think the house was very pretty, but it was practical: He liked the
floor plan, and the spaces where the big built-in closets had been. It was
also two stories high.

Cieutat, however, wanted $68,000 for the house. Kilgore and Fraser-Orr
thanked her and drove on.

For hours, they walked through skeletal houses. There was no need to call
ahead, or ask for keys. They saw that a few houses had formal for-sale signs
planted in the yard, with photos of well-coiffed listing agents smiling
incongruously. Many other homes were for sale by owner, with the signs
sometimes spray-painted on the shingles.

The tour stretched over a number of afternoons. But a few weeks later,
Fraser-Orr said he and his investment partner were still not ready to buy a
house.

One of the reasons he wanted to invest in St. Bernard Parish, he said, was
because the people seemed so tied to the place. His mother-in-law had lived
here; he had seen it firsthand. But it also appeared that residents'
attachment to their homes was preventing him from finding a good deal.

"People are giving up where they've been raising their families," he said.
"To them, the houses still have a value, but it's not a fair market value."

Eventually, he said, reality would sink in.

It seemed to be sinking in for Kilgore, as well.

Kilgore figures that St. Bernard is bound to bounce back. It has always been
a bargain, and close to New Orleans. But a rebound might take a few years.
But for now, she said, she would have to find other neighborhoods to
specialize in.

"I hate to do it because I'm so drawn to St. Bernard," she said. "But I just
need to face the fact that I can't make a living there." 
Copyright C 2006, The Los Angeles Times 


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