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Real estate agent Sandy Daly says several big question marks hang over the housing market for 2010.

Tax credits of $8,000 for first-time homebuyers and $6,500 for certain other homebuyers will expire April 30, with closings required by June 30, and Daly says the federal government is not in a position to extend the program. “About 47% of all homebuyers in 2009 were first-time homebuyers,” says the broker for C.J. Brown Realtors on Sherwood Forest Boulevard and recent past president of the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors. “What’s going to be the catalyst to get that group to continue to buy, we don’t know.”

Further, the Federal Reserve plans to stop buying mortgages in March, which could spur a rise in interest rates that are at notable lows—about 5.2% for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage earlier this month. “How high will they go and how quickly will they get there?” Daly says. “That restricts your pool of buyers who can buy a home.”

Another worry is what impact newly foreclosed homes will have. While several banks in the past month put 90-day moratoriums on foreclosures, others such as Citigroup along with Fannie and Freddie Mac held off just through the holidays. “What will happen to our current inventory?” Daly says. “Eventually those homes that will be foreclosed upon will be coming onto the market.”

Although she says Capital Region property values were less hurt during the recession than elsewhere, even people who can buy a home are being cautious because of job-loss worries. “People are sort of staying put,” she says. “‘I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew later on.’ Fear is a factor.”

Andrea Phelps McKey, co-owner with her husband of Coldwell Banker One on Bluebonnet Boulevard, plus locations in Prairieville and Denham Springs, is plenty optimistic about 2010.

She will be chairwoman of the National Association of Realtors conference in November in New Orleans and says the NAR estimated last year that 16 million renters are in a financial position to purchase a medium-sized home, up from 11 million a decade ago. She also says the average age of a first-time homebuyer is 31, compared with 39 for all buyers.

“I see that as a very healthy trend,” she says. “It’s allowing people to become
homeowners a little earlier.”

She says Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors’ Multiple Listing Service inventory is just under seven-and-a-half months, whereas anything between six and nine months is considered a good margin. She also says houses are selling within an average 3% differential, meaning they go for at least 97% of list price.

“We are seeing prices continue to hold,” she says. “It’s not particularly a buyers’ or sellers’ market.”

Realtor Mary Garner DeVoe with Keller Williams Realty, on Bluebonnet Boulevard and in Prairieville and Zachary, says she feels positive about the market. “We had a better year in 2009 than we did in 2008,” she says. “I see movement a little bit more in the commercial area, and that’s been kind of stagnant. That follows residential.”

Notably, she says “overbuilt” inventory because of post-Katrina population shifts has been largely absorbed, which means sellers are not going to make a “post-Katrina bundle” as they could have a couple years ago.

“We didn’t have Arizona-, California-, Florida-type appreciation, but we did have higher-than-normal prices for around here,” she says. “That’s got to correct itself.”

Despite the agents’ relative hopefulness for 2010, the number of houses sold in metro Baton Rouge last year fell 6.2% compared with the year before, despite a rise in sales in Ascension and Livingston parishes. East Baton Rouge Parish home sales were down 10.6%, while Livingston had a 3.3% sales gain and Ascension had a 3% gain.—T.B. and T.R.B.