BusinessReport.com

When Zelma Hogan moved to Shenandoah in the early 1970s, the area was so rural she could see cows when she looked out the window of her den.

“I loved it because I felt like I was halfway in the country,” says the retired Exxon process operator, who has moved twice since then, both times to other homes in Shenandoah. “Now it’s city all the way—but I still love it.”

Hogan is not alone. Despite the resurgence of older, more quaint neighborhoods in south Baton Rouge and the seemingly endless growth of upscale subdivisions jammed full of “McMansions,” the solidly middle class Shenandoah has held its own. The early 1970s-era development has seen healthy growth in recent years, as buyers have flocked to an area that remains attractive because it still offers a lot of bang for the buck.

“You get nice homes in that price range that most people are looking in—roughly $250,000 and below,” says Mel Landry, a real estate agent with ERA Stirling Properties. “That’s what the biggest segment of our buying population can afford.”

Consider that the average home price in Shenandoah this year is a reasonable $190,000. That’s 5% more than last year’s average sale price and a whopping 30% more than the average price in 2005.

Hogan has witnessed those kind of price increases in her Woodlawn Estates subdivision, where she bought her third Shenandoah home about three years ago. At the time, she paid $140,000 for the house, which is a comfortable 2,300 square feet but needed a good bit of updating. Now, most of the homes in her immediate area are selling for at least $200,000, a price she feels confident she could command if she were willing to put her home on the market.

Statistics back that up. The average price per square foot has increased steadily, jumping to $94 this year, a 7% increase over last year and a nearly 25% increase over 2005. Meanwhile, the difference between the average asking and selling prices has remained low, hovering below 2.5%.

“The percentage growth between 2005 and 2006, when Katrina was a factor, is a lot greater than between last year and this year,” Landry says. “But that’s typical of everywhere. It’s leveling out but still doing very well.”

The general area known as Shenandoah comprises a large swath of southeast Baton Rouge. It includes not only the original subdivision that gave the locale its name, Shenandoah Estates, but several others that now stretch from George O’Neal and Jones Creek roads to Tiger Bend Road and Confederate Avenue. Though home prices vary from one subdivision to another, real estate agents say the entire area remains fairly consistent overall.

That’s been good news to homeowners of the older properties in Shenandoah Estates. Many were up in arms when developers bought the financially troubled Shenandoah Country Club nearly three years ago and unveiled plans to redevelop the golf course into an upscale subdivision of high-end, single-family homes called Green Trails of Shenandoah.

“People who lived on the golf course were upset because they didn’t want to lose the golf course,” local appraiser Scott Pizzolato says. “They would have rather looked out onto a course than onto another house.”

Indeed, the controversy the plans engendered—and the lawsuits that followed—potentially threatened not only the development but home prices in the older part of the subdivision. But two years later, Green Trails is pre-selling some of the highest priced homes in the area, with asking prices starting at $350,000 on the low end. Prices on the golf course properties of Shenandoah Estates, meanwhile, are holding steady.

“There was concern initially when all the controversy was going on,” says real estate agent Linda Gaspard of Re/Max First, who specializes in the Shenandoah area. “But now that it’s over, we haven’t seen any residual affects.”

A large part of the area’s appeal, besides its affordability, is its public schools. They are among the highest performing in the parish, and Shenandoah Elementary was named a national blue ribbon school last year. What’s more, Woodlawn High School and Woodlawn Middle School are both in new, state-of-the art facilities.

“My daughter can’t afford to send her kids to private school,” says Hogan, whose grandchildren now attend Woodlawn High as her children did in the 1980s. “So she’s got to send them to public schools, and these are good schools in a good area.”

As the area is growing residentially, it’s also becoming more commercially developed, which many residents consider to be an advantage of living in Shenandoah. Big-box stores now dot the area, as do an increasing number of restaurants, movie theaters and drive-through coffee shops. While such development has spoiled the rural characteristics of the area that longtime residents like Hogan once enjoyed, it hasn’t deterred her and others from wanting to live there.

“I love the people out there,” she says. “It’s like a self-contained community within the larger city. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed.”