West bank home prices could fall 20 percent on Avondale Shipyard closure - NOLA.com

Chris Granger/The Times-PicayuneA study released Monday suggests that housing prices on the west bank could fall 20 percent as a result of the closure of Avondale Shipyard. Realtors Last year, Northrup Grumman announced it would close the 70-year-old west bank shipyard, then the state's largest private employer, in 2013. Workers are being let go as work on the yard's final ship is completed. The shipyard provided stable middle-class jobs with average salaries of $65,000 a year. Workers expressed concerns of losing their homes to foreclosure if they couldn't find jobs with wages that would allow them to make their mortgage payments. Workers were also concerned about their ability to sell their homes in a declining housing market if they needed to move. As a result, researchers decided to survey 63 Realtors randomly selected from the greater New Orleans region about how the closure would affect the Real Estate market on the west bank and across the region. Some 90 percent of Realtors predicted that prices would fall by at least 20 percent near the shipyard. Another 91 percent said they believed the closure of Avondale would have a negative impact on the New Orleans area housing market as a whole, with 28 percent of Realtors surveyed predicting a drop in housing prices of more than 20 percent across the region. There's also no reason to think that all of the Avondale workers will suddenly put their homes on the market, because unless they're prepared to move to the Dakotas to use their welding skills on shale gas development, there aren't necessarily better job opportunities in other places. Ragas believes it's more likely that workers will try out temporary jobs in other locations, leave their families back in the New Orleans area, and come back to visit every other weekend. He suspects they'll leave only when they believe they have secure jobs in a new place. It may be (bad for the housing market) over time, but near term, I don't think it's that dreadful," he said. If they're going to move everybody, it's not until they're sure that they've got a job that's going to last. No time frame was attached to the Realtors' dire predictions, since no one knows how quickly the jobs will be eliminated. Researchers also don't know how many workers may seek to move or how quickly. Some workers seem to likely to find other employment for their skills. Other employees had jobs that were so specialized that they might have trouble transferring their skills, and may need to leave the area. Still others have deep roots in the region and don't want to contemplate leaving, so they seem most concerned about making their mortgage payments, Striffler said. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.