With the weather dropping like it did this weekend I almost forgot how to make a roux! I miss gumbo weather!
Let’s talk condos!
The quick view:
447 condos are for sale in New Orleans right now.
27 sold in the last 30 days.
That is the fewest sales in four months.
Last month I said faster sales looked like the fall market waking up. October says I was early.
I pulled every condo sale in Orleans Parish from the MLS in the last month and lined it up against the last three reports.
Did the fall market show up?
Not yet. Under contract held steady at 45 condos, so buyers are out there. They just aren’t closing at the pace sellers need. Closings fell to 27 condos and days on market climbed back to 56.
Is this a buyer’s market for condos?
Yep, and it isn’t close! 7 months of supply is where a market tips toward buyers. Condos in New Orleans sit at 14... and that number has gone up two months in a row. At this pace it would take well over a year to sell what is listed today.
That is hard news for owners. Most condo listings in this city are not going to sell at their current price. 126 of them have already sat six months or more.
What does that mean in dollars?
Sold condos closed at a median 96% of their last list price. On a $310,000 condo that is about $12,400 off the ask.
Why won’t some condos sell?
Price explains most of it. In the CBD the median asking price is $540,000 and the median sale was $291,750. Those sales went under contract in 21 days, and pending there went up from 7 to 10. Units priced to the market move. The rest wait.
Cheap does not mean easy to sell.
A third of listings under $200K have sat six months or more, about the same share as listings over $400K. The numbers don’t show why. The usual suspects are the building, not the unit: HOA dues, special assessments, and whether a lender will finance it. Ask for the HOA budget and any recent assessments before making an offer.
At which price point do condos actually sell?
Between $200K and $399K. That range has the lowest stale share and more than half of everything under contract. Uptown and the CBD are the only zones with more than a handful of sales, and both went under contract in five weeks or less. Uptown’s pipeline did thin out though. Pending dropped from 13 to 9 condos.
Which neighborhoods are slowest?
Bywater and Marigny had zero sales in 30 days, and the median active listing has now sat at 175 days. The Lakefront’s 3 sales took a median 143 days to go under contract, and half its listings have sat 180 days or more. The French Quarter had 4 sales against 122 listings.
If you own a condo in this city, are you holding one you would sell at today’s price, or one you are waiting on the market to come back for?
🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠
Philip Ewbank,
Realtor Keller Williams Realty New Orleans
8601 Leake Ave, New Orleans, LA 70118
C: 504.335.7481 | O: 504.862.0100
Each office independently owned & operated. Licensed in the state of Louisiana. License #0995700196
So I love this timing: NOLA.com also ran a piece this morning on the same thing: “Own a condo in downtown New Orleans or the French Quarter? Good luck selling it.”
Their numbers are by ZIP code:
70112 (CBD, upper Quarter, Treme): 15+ months of inventory
70113 (CBD, Central City): 15+ months
70116 (Quarter, Treme, upper Marigny): 12+ months
70130 (Warehouse District): 9 months, about where it was in 2019
There are a couple of differences between this report and Nola.com's article.
Their numbers count houses and condos together. Mine are condos only. Our conclusions are similar though.
What the article also doesn’t show is price. CBD condos that sold went under contract in a median of 21 days. The median asking price there is $540,000. The median sale was $291,750. The condos are selling. The asking prices are what’s stuck.