Baton Rouge’s 10 most expensive home sales of 2011

Perception drives markets, which is why many local real estate professionals have spent much of the past three years telling anyone who would listen that the housing market implosion they’d been hearing about in the national media wasn’t happening in the Capital Region. As it turns out, they say, local residential real estate values never really deflated, buttressing claims that the Baton Rouge area never had a massive housing bubble in the first place. A post-Hurricane Katrina bump, perhaps, followed by an inevitable correction, but not a bubble. In recent months, according to CoreLogic, values have been dropping. Average sale prices fell 5.3% in November 2011 compared to the previous year, although the dip was only 0.6% when short and real estate-owned sales aren’t included. Those numbers reflect the overall market, however. As for high-end homes, it’s hard to draw any broad conclusions about the market, since there are few sales and few qualified buyers in that price range. For what it’s worth, the Greater Baton Rouge Multiple Listing Service used by the industry shows 11 sales above $1.25 million in Baton Rouge in 2011, compared to nine in 2010. As one might expect in Baton Rouge, most of the top 10 most expensive home sales are in neighborhoods whose names contain the words “Country Club,” “Bocage” or “Highland.” Check them all out in the new Business Report cover story by David Jacobs here.