North Dakota markets may provide hints on how Nashville will recover
The impact of the May Day flood on the local real estate market may not be known for weeks.
"There’s just no way to know," Greater Nashville Association of Realtors President Lucy Smith said Monday morning.
Between calls to friends and fellow real estate agents affected by the weekend’s record-breaking deluge, Smith said it was too early to tell even the basics of what the postdiluvian Nashville market will look like.
There are doubtless hundreds, if not thousands, of for-sale properties still under the waters of the Harpeth, the Cumberland and their tributaries.
"I doubt there’s a Realtor that doesn’t have someone affected by it," Smith said. "We do know there’s a lot. I’ve heard several stories, but we won’t know for a while."
With two major floods of the Red River in the past two years, Fargo, N.D. has seen more than its fair share of floodwaters.
Peggy Isakson is an agent in North Dakota’s largest city. She said it was surprising how well the market there weathered the floods.
"Last March kind of sucked for us," she said with a chuckle. "But it came back strong. The latter part of the year was really, really strong."
She said market volume in 2009 ended up ahead of the previous year, due in large part to relocations required as homeowners looked for new places to live.
Isakson said many people simply relocated within existing neighborhoods.
"It’s amazing. They see the flood one month and the next month it’s forgotten," she said.
She said depending on the number of insurance claims, it’s possible relocations may get stuck in the pipeline as people await buyout money.
"We may not even be through the buyout phase yet," she said.
Despite two years of record floods, Fargo did not see large sections of town inundated similar to what’s been seen in Bellevue. But 80 miles north on Interstate 29 in Grand Forks, where neighborhoods were wiped out by the rising waters of the Red River, a flood in 1997 is still having a noticeable impact.
"It still affects the market there," Isakson said. "All the older houses, which are more inexpensive, were washed out and they can’t be replaced."
Back in the Music City, Smith said signs of how the flood will change the Nashville real estate landscape may be apparent within a week or so.
"One of the things that will start happening is they’ll withdraw properties from the MLS and they are going to cancel viewings and open houses," she said.
But, of course, there is a positive spin to be made.
"There are some businesses that are going to get a lot of work that haven’t seen a lot of work. I am trying to look at the positive side," Smith said.
For now, though, the economic ripples of the storm are not her top priority.
"That’s the last thing we are worried about."
