It’s likely, according to a real estate expert. In the same week of reporting data from the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Realtors that shows New Orleans’ housing market is cooling down, NOLA.com reports it might heat up again as a result of the recent Louisiana floods.
NOLA.com quotes Wade Ragas, who wrote that housing report:
"That flooding is going to produce a whole new wave of buyers or renters who could absorb the vacant housing stock, and there's not a big stock of vacant housing in either the Baton Rouge area or New Orleans for sale."
While it would seem risky to move from Baton Rouge to the more flood-prone New Orleans, Ragas says recent flood protections make some parts of the Greater New Orleans area lower risk:
"Actually, the lowest-risk place to live is inside the levees and the pumping stations in central Orleans Parish and in East Jefferson and east bank St. Charles ... that's actually the most flood protected place in the whole state — maybe the Gulf Coast."
Ragas says more New Orleanians may rent to those whose flood-damaged homes are being renovated, and others may look to hotels as an option.