With its quiet, expansive estates, tree-lined Highland Road has long been a local address of success. But with “for sale” signs increasingly popping up—and staying up—it’s an address that local Realtors are finding unusually difficult to fill. Twelve homes currently sit for sale on Highland Road between West Lee Drive and Kenilworth Parkway, a number Jane St. Amant of Keller Williams Realty Partners considers “way above average” for the area. “The normal is four or five homes,” St. Amant says. “Even though the market is showing good improvement, upper-end homes on Highland Road are lagging behind the 2009-2010 market.”
The open properties on the stretch span a wide price range, from $349,900 to more than $2 million. Most were vacated within the past year, though one goes as far back as February 2009. “We are in a buyer’s market,” says Mike Glisson of Glisson Properties.
Danielle Cooley of Keller Williams Realty says that such a high amount of unsold homes is “unusual” on that stretch of Highland. “In the greater Baton Rouge luxury market, there is currently more than 21 months’ inventory on the market, which is high,” Cooley says. She recently accepted a contingent contract on a Highland Road property that had been on the market since November. “We did not sell it as quickly as we would have liked,” she says.
Interest in St. Amant’s Highland Road offering, valued at $980,000 and for sale since November, is so weak that she is considering marketing it as a bed-and-breakfast. “It has so much potential,” she says.
Realtors did not attribute the trend to any singular factor. “Everybody has a different circumstance,” Quita Cutrer, a Realtor with Burns & Company, says of the three homes she has listed on Highland Road; one of them is a property once owned by former LSU football coach Nick Saban. “The million-dollar homes, they’re in their own category.”
Glisson agrees, saying the disparity of home prices presents an inaccurate gauge of the market. “The increased number is negated by the wide price range, since few if any buyers would be looking at all homes,” he says. He expressed confidence that sales will pick up. Interest in his Highland Road listing, which has been open since May 2010, “has been good, maybe a little more than some of my other properties,” he says. “The location and the beautiful setting have sparked increased interest.”
St. Amant says she is “optimistic that the second half of this year will produce more sales in this area. … They will bounce back.”
