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Homes flying off the market nine months after Harvey

Jefferson County seeing a large sellers market for homes nine months after the storm displaced thousands of families.

BEAUMONT — Melanie Dishman has been a real estate agent for three years. In those three years, she hasn’t seen homes sell as fast as they are now.

“I had a situation two months ago where the first person who walked through bought the house,” said Dishman. “They came through and had a contract in 24 hours. That has happened to me twice.”

Dishman says that homes are selling like hot cakes in part, because of the damage done to local homes because of Harvey nine months ago.

“If you want to sell your home, we need it,” laughed Dishman.

The numbers speak for themselves. According to a monthly report from the Texas Realtor Data Relevance Project provided by the Texas A&M University Real Estate Center, closed sales in April of 2018 for Jefferson County are up 31.5% from April 2017 and 4.4 % in Beaumont alone. However, active listings are down 35.8% in Jefferson County, and 40.2% in Beaumont. So sales are increasing but inventory less.

But Harvey could have already increased the need for homes in area that had been shifting to a seller’s market even pre storm.

“I think it’s reflective of both the pre-storm demand, the industrial expansions, and you’ve got some folks that are ready to maybe move out of family, or they don’t want to rebuild in a certain area so they are looking for housing again,” said Christopher Boone, Director of Planning and Community Development for the City of Beaumont.

Boone, says about 2,250 or about 5% homes were flooded in Beaumont during Harvey. Of those 2,250 homes, Boone estimates 500 families are still displaced. Those displaced families are now either living with family members, in mobile homes outside of their homes, or hotels provided by FEMA. Some families even opting to move into apartments following the storm to ride out the construction on their homes, but the apartment market seems to be reflecting the housing markets. Units are being leased as soon or even before they are on the market. After talking with some popular apartment complexes in the area of Major Drive, 12news found that most were operating at around 95% capacity, and two even operating at 100%. Dishman believes that number may deflate soon.

“It’s going to loosen up a little because all the people that were flooded out of their homes are getting them repaired, and returning to their homes,” said Dishman

If you are looking to get out of your home what can you expect? Well you can possibly expect to make more money. The median price of a home in Jefferson County is $149,000. That is up 13.1% from April of 2017. You should be careful though. According to Dishman, you can price yourself out of your own neighborhood.

“We hear this question all the time, ‘wow I bet I can get a lot of money for my home after Harvey’,” said Dishman. First of all you can price yourself out of your own neighborhood. No matter how desperate people are they know.

For those looking to stick around, who are in the Beaumont area for the long haul despite being displaced, according to Boone, full recovery may take longer than you think.

“Three years but they’ll also have extensions,” said Boone. “I can tell you that we just closed out some projects from Ike, and that’s been ten years ago.”

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