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When Keith Sing was a third-grader at Jefferson Terrace Elementary School in the early 1960s, his class planted a cypress tree in the school yard. As a parent at the school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he took pride in pointing out to his own children the fruits of his boyhood horticultural pursuits.

Today, Sing is retired. But he still admires the tree. And he still lives in the neighborhood that has more or less been home for his entire life. It’s a pattern that is not unusual in Jefferson Terrace, a centrally located subdivision that is popular with its residents because of its close-knit feel and affordable home prices.

“A lot of people don’t leave this neighborhood,” explains Sing’s wife Vicki, who grew up in North Baton Rouge but moved to the subdivision when the couple married in 1982. “We have several friends who grew up here and still live here.”

A glance at statistics suggests the area is holding its own. The average home sale last year was $196,000, and the median home sale, arguably a more accurate reflection of a given area, was $208,000. Both numbers represent a respectable increase—8% and 6%, respectively—over the year before.

So far, average home sale prices are slightly down in 2008 to $189,000, but are still above 2006 figures. What’s more, the average price per square foot is up this year over last, the number of days homes typically spend on the market is down and buyers are getting on average about 97% of their asking price, which is one of the most significant determinants of market strength.

“Price is a really big factor,” says real estate agent Linda Dowden. “Houses priced under $200,000 sell real quickly.”

Granted, most of the homes in the original Jefferson Terrace subdivision are older—between 50 and 60 years old. Many need updating, and many of the original owners are still living there in kitchens with 30-year-old appliances and wallpaper from the 1960s.

On the flip side, however, the older homes are well built and sit on large lots. That has made them attractive to young families looking for affordable fixer-uppers.

“Because they were built better in the 1960s, people can fix them up and update them and they’re really very nice,” says Sing, who is a board member with the Inniswold Estates Jefferson Terrace Civic Association.

The Inniswold Estates-Jefferson Terrace area includes only the original parts of the development, though sometimes other nearby subdivisions are lumped in with it. There’s a newer section of the development, Sixth Filing, which has its own civic association and generally higher priced homes. Two other nearby subdivisions, Lakeshore Garden and Woodland Oaks, are also sometimes considered part of Jefferson Terrace because they can only be accessed by driving through the older parts of the neighborhood.

“But they’re not technically part of Jefferson Terrace,” says realtor Bridget Fredericks, who did not figure them into the real estate prices she provided for this story. “They all have their own names, so they’re all really separate.”

Fredericks says the homes in those newer subdivisions have been selling very well, while the older properties take a little longer to move. But residents of the original Jefferson Terrace don’t think the newer developments have detracted from their older properties. On the contrary, the increased activity has only served to bolster the area as a whole.

“I think it’s made it more desirable, except for the additional traffic,” says Sing.

While traffic snarls may be a slight drawback to living in the area, residents say there are many plusses. Jefferson Terrace is centrally located with proximity to the interstate, major arteries like Bluebonnet and Airline, and the Mall of Louisiana. Numerous offices and strip malls have also sprung up along Bluebonnet in the past five years, creating a synergy in the area that has, in turn, fueled more growth.

“I’ve really seen resurgence in the past few years because it’s closer to town,” says Dowden. “That has all tended to make that neighborhood show that it has a lot of good things going on.”

Longtime residents also point to the subdivision’s kid-friendly amenities, namely a popular BREC park and a private swimming club that sits just adjacent to it.

But more than that, residents appreciate what they describe as the small-town atmosphere of Jefferson Terrace, and the sense of community that comes from multiple generations who keep returning to the neighborhood where they grew up.

Says Sing: “It’s like its own little city within the bigger city.”